Research challenge

Established state-of-the-art

Project innovation

WP1: Correctness and conformity check of CAD-models

A number of commercial systems exist. However, the set of checks is limited and complete diagnoses of e.g., self-intersection in CAD-models do not exist.

The project will extend the types of CAD-model checks, e.g., complete diagnoses of self-intersections and other check criteria necessary for analysis and or long-term use  of CAD-models in a life-cycle perspective.

WP2: Repair of CAD-models

Current CAD-model repairs do to a great extent only address local behaviour of adjacent CAD-surface patches, e.g., by enforcing water-tight  or tolerance-dependent continuity of position, tangent, or curvature.

CAD-model repair focused on the global behaviour of functional object hull regions to ensure that the global properties are not destroyed by local repair. T-splines will be considered as a representation approach. We will particularly focus on needs in steel constructions and product data management.

WP3: Creation of iso-geometric CAD-representation from STEP type CAD-model

Today this is a manual process

From repaired CAD-models we aim at near-automatic generation of iso-geometric tri-variate (volume) representation of CAD-models, and further to restructure the iso-geometric model to a structure aimed at needs of specific analysis applications.

WP4: Generation of traditional FEM-model from iso-geometric CAD-representation

As far as we know, little work has been devoted to this task as iso-geometric CAD-models is a fairly new concept.

We will devise approaches  for automatic generation of standard FEM-grids from the iso-geometric CAD-models to enable an interface between iso-geometric CAD and standard FEM.

WP5: Generation of iso-geometric finite elements

The work of Prof. Tom Hughes demonstrates the feasibility of generating iso-geometric finite elements

We will extend the platform established according to needs in steel constructions and other selected analysis domains.

WP6: Extension of analysis packages by iso-geometric elements

The work of Prof. Tom Hughes (Univerisyt of Texas, Austin)demonstrates the superiority of this approach.

We will select analysis problems where we see the greatest benefit with respect to iso-geometric geometry representation from design to analysis, with possible shape modifications of the iso-geometric models to be transferred back to traditional CAD. We will demonstrate a complete process workflow.