Research Area

Machine design is a wide and inherently multidisciplinary area. The research at this division is directed towards formal methods for systems engineering and design, product development methods, industrial design and optimization design methods. The philosophy is to develop design methods which utilize state of the art modeling methods in order to design complex and multidisciplinary products. Click on the bellow buttons to further explore our research areas. Click here to view the connection between our research fields and our applied applications.

CAD CAx

High Level CAD modeling

It has been pointed out that, regardless of disciplines, basically all analyses require information that has to be extracted from a geometry model. Hence, in order to enable integrated design analysis and optimization it is of vital importance to be able to integrate an automated parametric geometry generation system into the design framework. On this front, the rate of computational advancements is continuously paving way for new design tools, providing increasing model fidelity as well as increasing the prospect for design reuse and automation. The last mentioned can also be used to abolish routine-like tasks, leading to elimination of human errors and possibilities to design more customized products. The automated geometry generation is a key enabler for so-called geometry-in-the-loop multi-disciplinary design frameworks, where the CAD geometries can serve as framework integrators for other engineering tools.

To eliminate non-creative work, methods for creation and automatic generation of High Level CAD templates (HLCt) is being developed in the division of Machine Design. The basics of HLCt can be compared to parametric LEGO® blocks containing a set of design and analysis parameters. These are produced and stored in libraries, giving engineers or a computer agent the possibility to first topologically select the templates and then modify the shape of each template parametrically.

Aerodynamic Analysis

Generally the aerodynamic design methods in early phases are empirical and statistically dominated. For a given validity range these methods provide fast results with fair accuracy. Designing new concepts falling out of range from conventional design, requires new tools to be implemented.One possibility is to use numerical panel code solvers which have traditionally been too time expensive for earlier phases of design, but are still a much faster alternative than other CFD-solvers.

In the divsion of Machine Design, methods are developed which enable seamless integration between panel code solvers and CAD tools. The mesh of a given model is hence generated, exported and re-formulated in order to be evaluated. 

Dynamic Simulation

Dynamic models are typically based on differential and algebraic equations. Many tools exist for this purpose, often specialized for on specific domain such as mechanical systems. However there are exceptions such as Modelica, a general modeling language developed in an international effort by the Modelica Association. The Modelica Association consists of members from both industry and academia with the intention of establishing a de-facto standard for modeling and simulation of complex systems from different engineering domains. The Modelica language contains several features which support model integration and model evolution throughout the design process.

Modelica is thereby very suitable to evaluate and estimate multidisciplinary system behavior, which is why it is frequently used in many of the research programs in Machine Design.

Page responsible: peter.hallberg@liu.se
Last updated: 2011-10-25