MpCCI – Solving multidisciplinary problems by coupling simulations

Simulation of complex manufacturing processes to predict structural product characteristics often requires a chain of distinct simulation disciplines. Each simulation step typically requires a specific problem discretization to handle the physical effects. To achieve realistic simulation results, local material properties have to be specified as initial condition at each step of the virtual process chain. In addition to the transfer of local material properties along a manufacturing chain, simulation models have to be validated by comparison with experimental test results.

In order to transfer local material properties between consecutive simulation steps, MpCCI Mapper as file-based mapping tool has been developed by SCAI.

Concerning the thermal behavior of automotive vehicles, it is pursued to accomplish simulations for the full complexity of a vehicle’s geometry and transport phenomena of heat including convection, radiation and conduction in fluids and solid bodies. The different heat transport mechanisms described are solved by specialized codes. The coupled approach supports steady state, transient and mixed type (quasi-stationary with transient) applications.

MpCCI CouplingEnvironment offers the possibility to couple your favorite CFD-Code with a code that is specialized to radiative and solid body conduction heat transfer.  Furthermore, it is possible to integrate your own inhouse code into the MpCCI environment.

When a surrounding fluid exerts pressure on a flexible structure, this structure deforms, which leads to changes in the flow field of the fluid. These so-called fluid-structure interactions appear in different application areas: the most common examples are wings, spoilers and other deformable parts of racing or everyday cars or the flutter of aircraft wings. Furthermore, this effect can be observed in many machines, especially where moving parts or light, very deformable walls are involved. Typical examples are valves, pumps or hydraulic engine mounts. MpCCI has been used successfully to solve different applications from all of these areas.

The development of turbomachinery with increasingly higher levels of efficiency makes the detailed knowledge of the mechanical, thermal and fluid dynamic processes indispensable. They serve for optimizations of the flow geometry, thermal stresses, lifetime, etc. The realistic simulation of the turbomachinery system often requires the knowledge of boundary conditions, which usually are the results of other simulation disciplines or even are strongly interrelated with each other.
In order to consider those interactions (“multiphysics”), a mapping (using MpCCI FSIMapper) or a coupled simulation (MpCCI CouplingEnvironment) is required.

Multibody Simulations (MBS) and Finite Element Methods (FEM) are very effective tools to simulate the complex dynamics of vehicle and machine parts. Cosimulation is a natural means to increase the fidelity of these models to include environmental influences and additional physical phenomena such as fluid flow or electromagnetics. In addition, the simulation time for complex finite element  models can drastically be reduced by using Multibody Simulations for noncritical components.