A Methodology for Product Performance Analysis under Effects of Multi-Physical Phenomena

Due to the development of science and technology, the computer has become a useful tool for supporting engineering activities in product design. Many computer aided tools such as CAD/CAM, product data management (PDM), product life cycle assessment (PLA), etc., have been popularly used in industry for reducing product development lead-time and increasing total product quality. However, the numerical model of product created on these tools can only represent nominal information of the product. It is not able to deal with various kinds of multi-physical effect during the whole product life cycle, especially in manufacturing/assembly and product usage stage. In addition, most of performance simulations of the product are carried out by using this nominal model. It can make the quality of the product designed not to meet fully the requirements of customers and users. Thus, we propose in this paper a global methodology that allows integrating the multi-physical effect throughout the product life cycle into the performance simulation.