The last two decades of the 20th century have seen major improvements in the availability of computing power for FEA and in the capabilities of commercial FEA code. Computer processor speed has continued to increase as the cost has fallen. While the microprocessor of a typical desktop PC has jumped from 10MHz to 500+MHz during this period, the cost per millions of instructions per second (MIPS) has dropped from US$225 in 1991 to only US$2 in 1997. Continental Tyre has reported a 20-fold improvement in FEM efficiency in the past 10 years due to improvements in computer hardware and more efficient software code [103]. Goodyear has signed several cooperative agreements with Sandia Labs to develop new computational modelling tools for tyre mechanics and materials
This increase in computer power on the desktop now permits many types of computer
simulations of tyre performance to be run routinely by the tyre engineer. He can
evaluate the predicted effect of various tyre design and material changes using a
‘virtual tyre’ before he ever builds the first prototype for actual testing. This capability
is enabling tyre manufacturers to reduce their new product development cycles from
years to months
No comments:
Post a Comment