The technologies that are transforming the manufacturing industry in 2024 and beyond

3D printing: 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, can create complex and customized products with less material waste, lower production costs, and faster delivery times. It can also enable on-demand manufacturing, mass customization, and distributed production which is a game changer in r&d and small batch production.

Robotics and automation: Robots can perform various manufacturing tasks, such as assembly, painting, welding, and inspection, with high speed, accuracy, and efficiently. They can also reduce human intervention, labor costs, and errors and lead the efficiency in production.

The Internet of Things (IoT): IoT can connect and collect data from sensors on the factory floor and industrial equipment, enabling real-time monitoring, optimization, and automation of manufacturing processes. It can also improve supply chain visibility, product quality, and predictive maintenance, help in decision making and optimize the business processes efficiently.

GRAB THE BENEFITS OF AUTODESK INVENTOR NASTRAN

Autodesk Inventor Nastran embedded with FEA Technology is a mechanical simulation tool, which was developed by Autodesk Inc. USA. Initially, the Nastran software was developed for NASA but now adopted by Autodesk as well which offers FEA simulation capabilities. This software simulates the mechanical structures and analyze the environmental conditions in order to check the responses of the structure. This tool is useful to simulate the linear and nonlinear FEA studies.

Apart from general engineering materials, Nastran can also be used to simulate and analyze the latest advanced materials, including composites, plastic, nonlinear elastic, shape memory, hyperelastic, viscoelastic, and brittle materials such as concrete.

It considers the unit system from the CAD, which is attached to the simulation, or else you can also set the units as per the requirements.

If we talk about the number of analyses capabilities, which we can perform, using Inventor Nastran then it supports a wide range of it. First, it is important that you understand the requirements, outputs, and limitations of the analysis type before using it. You can perform the below analysis types by using the software such as;

1. Linear Static
2. Normal Modes
3. Linear Buckling
4. Prestress Static
5. Prestress Normal Modes
6. Nonlinear Static
7. Nonlinear Buckling
8. Direct Transient Response
9. Modal Transient Response
10. Nonlinear Transient Response
11. Direct Frequency Response
12. Modal Frequency Response
13. Random Response
14. Shock/Response Spectrum
15. Multi-Axial Fatigue
16. Vibration Fatigue
17. Linear Steady State Heat Transfer
18. Nonlinear Steady State Heat Transfer
19. Nonlinear Transient Heat Transfer

Inventor Nastran has also enabled the solution for contact analysis; you can set the contact type and tolerance, performance connectors simulation such as bolt etc.. This gives you the power to optimize the mesh to obtain the accurate results.

You can generate the line mesh, which can be used in uniform cross-sectional structures, mid surface mesh and shell mesh for sheet metal parts and solid mesh to generate the solid elements in the structure.

Meshing is the critical operation in FEA so it must be done with real scenarios in the study. In Finite Element Analysis, mesh size is very important; it is closely related to the accuracy and number of the element required in the mesh. By increasing the elements in the simulation, you get better and better results but once you get the optimum size of the mesh to obtain accurate result, it will not effect or difference is very less in the results more an less, you cannot change the other parameters of the simulation.  In other words, keep refining the mesh until you see no difference in your results.

The best part of this product is, Autodesk provides the subscription based licensed for this software at a very economical price. User can subscribe the license based on the need and work, so there is no extra cost for the product. It helps a lot to the independent consultant in order to offer their services at minimum cost. User can opt for the monthly or yearly subscriptions.

Autodesk Inventor Nastran is available as a standalone and network license, which provides consistent user experience, eliminate the need for multiple simulation technologies and delivers CAD-embedded workflow. In this, you can manage the license, transfer the license and it available only in the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection. To try the software capabilities you need to download the Inventor Nastran software and use its trial version free of cost.  For downloading the software use the below given link and you can also extract the price information details, system requirements, OS etc. as per needs.

Autodesk Inventor Nastran

Application Engineering

Application Engineering is all about the Planning, designing and implementation of technology.

Application Engineer role on the sales team is to represent the product from a technical standpoint so that sales person can handle the selling and business issues.

Engineering Materials Ductile Vs Brittle

When you select the material for design, you must be very sure about functionality and applications of the product. There are different aspects that can affect the product such as Yielding, Toughness, Hardness, Thermal conductivity etc.

Ductile materials are those which can undergo plastic deformation under the tensile loading and it is the ability to be drawn into wire. Ductile materials are generally used in metal forming processes.

Brittle materials do not undergo any plastic deformation that's why they fracture if load exceed yielding value. Brittle material are harder then ductile materials. Glass, Ceramic, Gray Cast Iron are some of the brittle materials examples. Brittle has less energy absorbing capacity.

In Brittle materials fracture occur before yield point but ductile materials go beyond yield point. 

A hyperelastic or Green elastic Material

A hyper-elastic or Green elastic material is a type of constitutive model for ideally elastic material for which the stress-strain relationship derives from a strain energy density function. The hyperelastic material is a special case of a Cauchy elastic material.
Linear elastic models do not accurately describe the observed material behaviour for many materials. The most common example of this kind of material is rubber. The stress-strain relationship can be defined as non-linearly elastic, isotropic, incompressible and generally independent of strain rate for rubber. Hyperelasticity provides a means of modeling the stress-strain behavior of such materials. The uses of hyperelastic material are:

The behavior of unfilled, vulcanized elastomers often conforms closely to the hyperelastic ideal. Filled elastomers are also often modeled via the hyperelastic idealization.
Biological tissues are also modeled via the hyperelastic idealization and so on.

Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) Market

Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) market can be segmented into Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Finite Element Analysis (FEA), and Multi-Body Dynamics (MBD) tools.

The market is also classified on the basis of end use into electronics and electrical, defense, aerospace, automobile, and industrial machinery.

The market segments on the basis of geographical regions are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Asia Pacific is expected to lead the CAE market owing to the increasing adoption of CAE tools and the emergence of large number of manufacturing industries in the region.

Computer Aided Technology (CAT) or Simulation Technology

Computer Aided Technology (CAT) or Simulation Technology is the discipline of designing a model of an actual or theoretical physical system, executing the model on a digital computer, and analyzing the execution output. To simulate something physical, you will first need to create a mathematical model which represents that physical object.

A computer simulation is a technique or technology to model a real-life or hypothetical situation on a computer so that it can be studied to see how the system works. You may be made predictions about the behavior of the system by changing variables in the simulation. It is a tool to virtually investigate the behavior of the system under study.

Manufacturing engineering represents one of the most important applications of simulation. This technique or technology represents a important tool used by engineers when evaluating the effect of failure, cost, and life of the equipment s. Simulation can be used to predict the performance of an existing or planned system and to compare alternative solutions for a particular design problem.

CAT or Simulation technology play major role in application engineering and it is a hot trend in the current IT market.  An applications engineer is responsible for designing and application of technology products relating to various aspects of computing. To accomplish this, he/she has to work collaboratively with the company’s manufacturing, marketing, sales, and customer service departments.