You’re familiar with the expression, “You can have it fast, you can have it done well, or you can have it cheap…pick two.”?

Well, thanks to a new tool currently in beta (with an early spring release date), CAE engineers will soon be able to choose all three.
In the past, we’ve examined why softwarecoupling is among the five most common mistakes engineers make in thermal modeling — specifically, not coupling tools at all, or insufficiently coupling them. However, we also acknowledge that there can be good reasons for not wanting to couple solutions, be their complexity, time or cost. 

But with CoTherm, those formerly “good” reasons are about to become a little more obsolete.

A Response to Demand

For a while now, engineers in the automotive industry (commercial car and truck, as well as heavy vehicle OEMs) have been searching and asking for a CAE solution that doesn’t sacrifice detail for the sake of time, or sacrifice time for the sake of detail. Engineers who demand precise simulation models have, in the past, taken it as a given that to achieve a very high level of detail, you had to use very sophisticated CFD solutions, such as PowerFLOW, Star-CCM+, Fluent, and others. But with those solutions came added time. Others, meanwhile, are drawn to tools like TAITherm, which can perform robust and nimble — and often critical — transient analyses in addition to steady-state analysis.

The paradox at play is when engineers demand the agility and precision of transient analysis, but the level of detail achieved by a CFD code. To do so would come at a cost…of time, and consequentially, of financial resources.

So the industry asked, “Can’t we have the best of both worlds?” To which, CoTherm answered, “Why yes, you can!”

Speed and Precision

CoTherm is an ambassador, of sorts, between CAE simulation products that facilitates the flow of information between simulations of coupled physical domains. CAE often requires complex processes that may involve multiple pieces of software, customized scripts, and other components to automate.

And given that coupling falls into those aforementioned five most common mistakes, CoTherm makes this easy and intuitive to implement. CoTherm does the coupling with much more automation — there is no need for the user to write code or develop scripts to make it work.

Once up and running, it allows engineers to run simulations in a continuous design loop, CFD is run in a steady state while that information is passed to TAITherm running the transient analysis…which, in turn, passes that information back to the CFD tool.

Best of all, CoTherm is remarkably customizable. The user can specify how often that transfer of information happens, and to what level of detail; and CoTherm will automatically deliver warnings if there are any red flags to be aware of. The system runs on an accessible API, allowing users to develop and deploy plug-ins as necessary to support additional functionality.

The end result is a solution that provides the precision and detail of sophisticated CAE software with the agility and full-spectrum capabilities of TAITherm.

What We Mean by “Cheap”

That third leg of the stool (to accompany having it done quickly and done well) is the time and cost savings that not only the tool itself provides, but the ease of implementation.

Those committing one of the five most common mistakes could fall into the category of not coupling solutions at all, recall; but in many cases, it’s not for lack of desire. Many companies lack the in-house staff, resources or time to write the scripts, bridges and codes to achieve the necessary coupling. CoTherm has managed to eliminate virtually all of the need for external expertise, resources, time and — at the bottom line — cost!

It’s not only the best of both worlds…it’s the best of all three!

Coming Soon

The first public release of CoTherm will come this spring. While early versions focus on thermal-CFD coupling, future releases will concentrate on FEA, 1D and other CAE tools along with the ability to set up customized coupling.

If you are interested in testing the new application, want to view a live demo of CoTherm in action, or have any questions at all about its forthcoming release, please do not hesitate to contact us.