Sharing Computational Simulation Knowledge for Co-Operative Work in the Design Process

Abstract

Nowadays, numerical simulation techniques are of great importance for the design and the development of products. More particularly, computational simulation is becoming more and more widely used all along the design process. But, spreading the computational simulation activities from small scale to industrial level in a company gives birth to new problems: coordination problems between numerous actors, lack of tracking, lost knowledge, repeated mistakes.

The work presented in this article is part of a research effort for developing methods and tools for co-operative work in computational simulation and for a better integration into the design process. Our global action focuses on defining a global collaborative system made up of knowledge-based system for organizing the simulation teams activity and prompting exchanging information. Developing and selling cars and trucks, Renault SA is confronted with this general problematic of sharing numerical simulation knowledge to support and encourage collaborative process between actors. Renault is an active partner of this research through one of its computational simulation departments and the present paper will show more particularly some results of this partnership and some examples of organization and knowledge support of co-operative work of simulation teams.