A virtual prototyping platform to improve CAE analysis workflow

This paper describes an experimental software system that allows interfacing a virtual immersive environment with Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) open source software aiming for improving and simplifying design process and results evaluation. System includes a middleware to execute jobs on HPC architectures and to compare results of server-class processors with GPGPU hardware. The main innovation of the overall system is the possibility to setup the CAE job directly inside the virtual reality platform speeding-up the entire process. User evaluations on selected case studies show how the use of a virtual environment may enhance the perception of engineers ideas during the design process. In addition, the use of a system that allows reconfiguring and relaunching the job simplifies setup of job configuration. Results also show that HPC hardware based on GPGPU offers a perceivable speedup for problems with an high number of nodes.