TERRIFIC | Towards Enhanced Integration of Design and Production in the Factory of the Future through Isogeometric Technologies

The TERRIFIC project aims at a significant improvement in the interoperability of computational tools for the design, analysis and optimization of functional products. An isogeometric approach is applied for selected manufacturing application areas (cars, trains, and aircraft) and for computer-aided machining. Computer aided design (CAD) and numerical simulation algorithms are vital technologies in modern product development, yet they are today not being seamlessly integrated. Their interoperability is severely disturbed by inconsistencies in the mathematical approaches used. Efficient feedback from analysis to CAD and iterative refinement of the analysis model is a feature of isogeometric analysis, and would be an essential improvement for computer-based design optimization and virtual product development. The new paradigm of isogeometric analysis demonstrates that much is to be gained in efficiency, quality and accuracy of the analysis step by replacing traditional ‘finite elements’ by volumetric (trivariate) NURBS elements. A general uptake of isogeometric approaches in industry can only be expected if there exist convincing technically verified and validated case studies showing real advantages over the current approaches, using both qualitative and quantitative indicators. It is also clear that the prior knowledge, such as it is contained in existing CAD-models, CAD-systems and numerical solvers, cannot just be dumped. It has to be investigated how the isogeometric concepts can actually be introduced on a large scale, starting from the interoperability of typical CAD-models and new isogeometric CAD-models all the way to product data management issues and standards. Our vision is to provide and disseminate tangible evidence of the performance of the isogeometric approach in comparison to traditional ones in four important application areas as well as addressing interoperability and other issues that necessarily arise in a large-scale industrial introduction of isogeometry.