The digital performance prototype emerged alongside CAD technology, virtual prototyping, CAE analysis and computer technology. It is built on a virtual prototype whose structural relationships are defined with accurate geometric attributes. CAE pre-processing and modelling tools create functional-quality analysis models, and CAE tools are then used at every stage of product development to coordinate and comprehensively simulate the functional quality of the product. Visualisation tools describe those functional-quality characteristics, keeping the development team closely connected with the customer throughout the whole process, and producing a deeper and more substantive exchange than conventional CAD technology allows.
I. A human-machine design environment
The approach combines human creativity and the designer's rich experience with the computer's powerful data processing and storage capability, lifting computer-aided design from a passive activity into an actively engaged one, and forming a product design and development environment in which human and machine complement each other.
II. System components
- Design and simulation computing software platform - builds the simulation model of the virtual prototype and runs the simulation experiments.
- Performance prototype model database - manages the resources associated with the virtual prototype model.
- Distributed computing platform - runs the performance prototype system in real time across distributed resources.
- Visualisation system - provides the means to represent and observe the performance prototype, presenting the prototype and its results in realistic graphics.
III. What HYSIM provides
HYSIM supplies the distributed computing platform and the visualisation system.
Through the distributed computing platform, jobs that normally take several days are reduced to a few hours, reaching the necessary and sufficient accuracy within the available time.
The visualisation system combines a virtual reality display system and visualisation software. The VR display system provides a stereoscopic virtual environment in which users are immersed and can interact with the virtual world; CAD Wall, CAVE or VR headsets of different specifications can be specified to match the application.
Visualisation software (EnSight, TechViz) presents computational results as colour contour plots, vector plots, particle traces, sections and similar graphics, or in virtual reality, and can also output them as text and charts. It turns the resulting digital information into an intuitive graphical representation of physical phenomena and quantities that vary over time and space, allowing researchers to see into the data.
IV. Outlook
The conditions for establishing a complete performance prototype system are now largely mature. The digital performance prototype is set to play an extremely important role as one of the principal technical means for design, operation, simulation, qualification and technical verification.