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MARKET TRENDS MARKET TRENDS M A Y 2 0 1 4 | 7 lengthens part lifecycles, making it diff- cult for the OEM to keep its competitive advantage. It is unrealistic, then, to think an OEM or its supply chain could assess the functionality, accuracy and consisten- cy of each simulation tool that is avail- able today. There are simply too many to test and many composites manufactur- ing methods for which each would have to be validated. The cost alone would be prohibitive, and the effort would further increase time to market. Theoretically, using the Internet to harvest data for both physical and virtual testing is ideal because all sorts of com- posite data is easily accessible. Whether data is collected from public sources or is purchased for a fee, it would be easier and faster than physical part testing. But right now, it's not very practical: Often, virtual and physical test data is gathered from multiple sources that offer different results for the same material, resin and/ or manufacturing process. This creates uncertainty about the data's accuracy. Also, suppliers publish material proper- ties that become the basic information required to run virtual simulations. But this information is typically insuffcient, requiring OEMs and suppliers to collect additional performance parameters. Yes, independent companies also ana- lyze material properties and then pub- lish data on them for a fee. Although this sounds ideal, it is not. There are no uniform criteria for gathering the data. To compensate, OEMs have to purchase multiple material databases. Many times, this approach is still insuffcient. Today, there aren't any better alternatives. The aerospace industry is forced to combine data from multiple sources, a time-con- suming and error-prone process. Although the industry has a long way to go to bring the composites software toolset to maturity and remove the un- certainties associated with composites manufacturing, there are things that can be done to narrow the gap between the Rani Richardson is a CATIA composites product specialist at Dassault Systèmes (Waltham, Mass.), r e s p o n s i b l e f o r leading all activi- ties related to the CATIA brand for Composites in North America, concen- trating on implementation, education and demonstrations for the CATIA V5 and V6 Composites Solutions. Previously, Rich- ardson was the director of operations at Magestic Systems (Westood, N.J.). I AN INTERNET AID FOR ACCELERATION OF AEROSPACE COMPOSITES CERTIFICATION n the March edition of this column, Purdue University's Dr. R. Byron Pipes suggested "Accelerating the Certifca- tion Process for Aerospace Composites" by certifying simulation software rather than manufactured parts (short.compos- itesworld.com/cdmHUB). This may seem radical, but it is, in fact, a logical concept that is not only possible but also has real potential to reduce and, perhaps, even eliminate the need for physical testing. But there is a barrier to its implemen- tation: Today's software-based simula- tion tools are readily available but they are at different maturity levels, don't communicate with each other seam- lessly and have gaps in processes where no commercial or academic codes exist. Aerospace companies must write their own proprietary codes or develop best practices on the shop foor to compen- sate for this shortcoming, which ulti- mately causes delays in manufacturing. The time and money an OEM invests in composite material testing and part development is extensive. The process is manual, and each OEM has its own pro- cesses to certify their parts. There is no "cookbook" for OEMs to use. The slightest design or material change increases cost, reduces productivity and, as a result, virtual and real worlds. One option that would facilitate the maturity process is to have all the toolsets, regardless of ma- turity level, accessible to all interested parties on an Internet-based platform. One such platform is the Composites Design and Manufacturing HUB (cdm- HUB.org). This Web site's objective is to accelerate the development of, and knowledge about, a comprehensive tool- set available to the entire composites community. It's intended as a platform for the birth, development, refnement, integration and commercialization of the simulation tools necessary to bring com- posites certifcation and manufacturing simulation to a level consistent with high-performance composites simula- tion tools for geometric and structural modeling, such as CATIA, NASTRAN, ABAQUS and ANSYS. The cdmHUB has been built using the proven HUBZero architecture. The National Science Foundation (NSF) pro- vided more than $30 million in funding to develop the original nanoHUB tech- nology and the HUBZero platform at Purdue University. Today there are 20 HUB organizations at Purdue using the same platform and RAPPTURE software, a toolkit that supports Rapid application infrastructure. (For more, visit https:// nanohub.org/infrastructure/rappture/). Supported by NSF, nanoHUB.org is the largest and most successful HUB. To date, it boasts 10,000 users worldwide. It has more than 350,000 simulations with more than 210 engineering tools to simu- late important nano phenomena used in nanoelectronics, materials science, thermal science, physics and chemistry. More than 2,500 content items, such as tutorials, seminars and full classes, are available to the community. The user community consists of students at all levels, research professionals, faculty and industrial users. Tools range from molecular modeling and simulation to photonics. 0514HPC Market Trends-OK.indd 7 4/22/2014 2:49:42 PM