A CAE-integrated distributed collaborative design system for finite element analysis of complex product based on SOOA

Large-scale finite element analysis of complex product needs a wider support from external CAE resources. This paper proposes a method of the distributed concurrent and collaborative design in the distributed intelligent resources environment to use Web-based extended manufacturing resources for product development. The CAE-integrated distributed collaborative design system architecture and enabling techniques are presented. Distributed CAE service resources on the Internet are achieved through Jini (TM) and service object-oriented architecture technologies. These CAE software tool resources are encapsulated as service providers in the system. A case study of railway bogie development is presented, and the Pro/E, HyperMesh, Ansys and HumanExpert service providers dynamically invoked and integrated as a temporary service federated environment with no need to know the exact location of a provider beforehand, flexibility can be well achieved, and collaborative design in the system can be implemented in the distributed dynamic environment. Compared with the traditional design system, some preliminary results indicate this architecture can shorten the cycle of service exchange, and strongly support concurrent and collaborative design of the complex product. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.