Sustainable product development: Provision of information in early automotive engineering phases

Sustainable product development is an important influencing factor in automotive engineering, whereby a comprehensive evaluation of its efforts and benefits is very complex. In addition, lots of information is not available in advance of mass production. This leads to the question, how results from impact assessment can be transferred to the beginning of the development process, where important decisions about product and production characteristics are made. The present paper discusses approaches for life cycle estimation and decision support in the concept phase of automotive engineering, especially focusing on the design engineer’s requirements. It includes an overview of current development processes and discusses by use of examples different approaches to integrate relevant information concerning sustainable product development in development processes

Advanced 3D-CAD Design Methods in Education and Research

The integration of advanced virtual engineering methods into 3D-CAD based development processes leads to increased requirements, concerning the software packages as well as regarding the applied procedures and strategies. Modern IT- based engineering tools offer much more than the conventional development methodologies in component creation and digital mock-up processes. The trend definitely goes into the direction of simultaneous CAE - support during the layout and design phases, attendant quality and structural management and the implementation of external data sources and receivers into the product development. It is up to the engineers to tap the full potential of virtual engineering processes regarding time reduction, error prevention in early phases and through technical modifications, whereas the applied methods and strategies represent a key factor on the way to efficient progresses. The present publication includes an assessment and evaluation of modern 3D-CAD based development processes and discusses future prospects in the field of virtual engineering. On the basis of parametric geometry generation, different methods and tools, which are able to increase the efficiency in virtual development processes, will be introduced and compared