A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | O C T O B E R 2 0 2 2 2 1 To gain competitive advantage in a global marketplace, it is crucial for companies to digitalize processes to reduce product development timelines and maintain engineering leadership. For digital engineering, the use of multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) techniques offers industry a new approach to product development, redesigning and remaking products with net-zero targets in mind. Product design is the process of identifying and defining a combination of features that satisfies a prescribed set of requirements. These requirements often include competing objectives and constraints, and they address different aspects of the product and its constituent parts. Traditional engineering tends to be sequential, but the complex nature of most products calls for a concurrent approach to be addressed. It is in this context that MDO has been gaining momentum in the last decade. The advantage of MDO is that it addresses all design elements of a product at the same time, resulting in superior design, lower development costs, faster new product introduction, and the ability to refine specific features to meet contrasting demands of different applications. MDO is the process of finding the optimal solution to a set of design requirements that encompass multiple disciplines; from structures to manufacturing, operations, disposal, and economic considerations. The concept of MDO is particularly suited for products or systems made up of multiple coupled parts that cannot be designed and optimized in isolation. The first step in setting up an MDO study is identifying the disciplines involved and understanding how they interact with each other. This enables the definition of the flow of information required for each discipline to be analyzed. Typically, each discipline uses specialized software tools. MDO platforms enable integrationbetween these tools so that data can be transferred seamlessly from one analysis module to the next, with the final goal of finding an optimumdesign, or set of designs, in a holistic fashion. CASE STUDY: DESIGN OF A COMPOSITE HYDROGEN PRESSURE VESSEL As hydrogen has emerged as one of the most promising solutions for achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the design of pressure vessels for transport and storage has been drawing increasing interest within the industry (Fig. 1). The National Composites Centre (NCC), headquartered in Bristol, England, is advancing the knowledge required to establish a dynamic U.K. supply chain by investing in hydrogen pressure vessel research and development to seed manufacturing in the country, and progressing the technology to help it remain competitive in the future. It is also part of the High THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL ENGINEERING DESIGN: DISCOVERING OPTIMUM DESIGNS FASTER Multidisciplinary optimization techniques provide a novel method for rapid product development that also meets sustainability goals. TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT Fig. 1 — A modern hydrogen tank for renewable energy.
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