DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

Dassault Systemes’ Simulia group is running its Simulia Customer Conference event in central London over the next few days and I’ve been sitting in on the presentations for the first day – for those involved with Simulia or perhaps Abaqus, these events were once know as the Abaqus user conference, but as ever, times change. While the initial introductions from the Simulia team brought a pretty standard update on the roadmap for the product set and the company as a whole, The keynote of interest for me was by Kelly Pike, Advisor R & D at Abbott Vascular, with his presentation entitled, “Is there a stent in your future?”

Kelly Pike, Advisor R & D at Abbott Vascular.

Headquartered in California, but operating globally, the company 6,000 employees world wide supporting the design and manufacturing of interventional devices. The design and manufacturing team is then supported by just seven FE analysts/ within a $29Bn business. The key challenge that Pike’s team are facing is the move away from metal alloy-based stents, into the realms of plastics.

His presentation was fascinating, if not purely for the human interest that the Life Sciences industry represents, but also the technical challenges they’ve encountered. Consider the stent. A microscopic device, inserted into the arteries to alleviate blockages and restriction of blood at various points around the body. When you’re dealing with devices that operate in a highly non-linear manner, with dimensions in the region of 0.004”, its clear that there are huge issues. But for me, two things from his presentation stood out.

Firstly, he described the need to conform to the FDA regulations (as stated in the FDA guidance 1545.pdf), specifically, the need to be able to “clearly identify and support all inputs and assumptions used in your analysis.” He described how simulation gives organizations working in this field the ability to both fully document their work, but also have an environment in which decisions and assumptions are tracked and fully auditable. This is something that resonates nicely with the topic of Simulation Life-cycle Management as espoused during the corporate updates on the Simulia business update at the head of the day.

Another example of perhaps often hidden benefits of simulation within the medical field was contained within a recent project to bring a Vessel closure device to market. When you’re inserting devices, such as stents, in major arteries, there is clearly an entry/exit wound that needs to be closed quickly and efficiently. Rather than relying on the traditional methods of having a qualified member of medical staff applying pressure until the blood has stopped flowing from that point, the company has developed a Vessel Closure device that closes off the wall of the artery. During production kick off and testing, it was found that there was a serious issue with fracture that could cause failure and the natural assumption was made that the design was in key cause. Using Abaqus, the team simulated the device in deployment and use and discovered that the design was sound, but rather the weakness was introduced later in on the processing stage as the devices were being prepared for use.

The final point of interest is how Pike’s team is moving away from a server-based environment to a workstation-based working method. According to Pike and much to his surprise, they’ve discovered that there’s an interesting relationship between using a central server and a much more localized hardware adoption strategy – comparing a $100,000 server set-up to the use of $7,000 workstations.

What was interesting is that the team uses a range of tools, from Abaqus, through SolidWorks and CosmosWorks, Patran and HyperMesh as well as all the normal reporting tools. When talking a look at the use of workstations, where everything is localized and all tools are instantly available, they’ve found that they can get the job done, from receiving the requirement for an analysis task to delivering the report, that the workstation set-up delivers things much more quickly. and of course, in these cost conscious times, setting up a seven person team with 7,000 workstations is much more effective than using a $100,000 server.

It took me a couple of goes to read this through and understand it, so I’m going to pretty much replicate the complete press release verbatim:

Researchers from The Open University and the University of Leeds have been awarded 195,000 GBP from the Leverhulme Trust to develop an intuitive computer aided design (CAD) system that could revolutionise the design process. They will examine how eye tracking technology could recognise which parts of design sketches the designer is interested in, and automatically suggest developments of that element.

Dr Steve Garner, Principal Investigator and Senior Lecturer in Design at The Open University, said: “Our starting point was thinking about what type of computer systems designers will be using in 15 or 20 years’ time. We believe that in the future, CAD systems will work alongside designers to stimulate and enhance their creativity by offering suggestions and highlighting alternative options right from the earliest point in the design process, when they’re sketching out their ideas.”

The research builds on a prototype CAD system funded through the Designing for the 21st Century programme, a joint initiative between the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The Design Synthesis and Shape Generation project (DSSG) produced the world’s first 3D shape grammar-based design system, which succeeded in overcoming a major limitation in current shape grammar-based systems – that of recognising ’sub-shapes’ in early design sketches.

Alison McKay, Professor of Design Systems at the University of Leeds, explains: “Sub-shapes or emergent shapes are those created when two or more shapes intersect. For example, if two squares overlap diagonally, we see a third square created in the middle. But in conventional CAD terms, this middle square doesn’t exist, because it has not been previously defined in the programming and is therefore ignored by the CAD system for design purposes. But in real life, designers use such ambiguities within their sketches to inspire further design developments using their creativity and experience and we succeeded in developing a system that could assist that process from the start.”

The new project takes the DSSG software a radical step further by adding eye tracking capability into the mix. It’s a step that could ultimately see the designer and software working in complete creative harmony.

“When we’re interested in something or when part of a picture catches our eye, our eyes are naturally drawn back to that part several times over. The eye tracking device could detect this interest and intuitively make suggestions to inspire the design development without the designer having to interrupt his or her train of thought to instruct the computer to work on a certain part,” Professor McKay continued.

“The designer wouldn’t have to physically interact with the software – the software would already be in tune, ready to support the creative process by suggesting new ways of seeing the possibilities a shape can offer.”

I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I’ve read it again now, I’ve got a nagging feeling in the back of my head that there’s an application for this screaming out at me. but I’m buggered if I can think of what it might be. Anybody got any ideas?

Exploring the DSSG web-site further, I stumbled across this:

Now that makes much more sense. I think. Help?