Bridging the Gap: A Review of Engineering Simulation Interoperability

The development of robust engineering simulation capabilities is often hindered by fragmented and siloed approaches to Modelling and Simulation (M&S). This lack of interoperability creates significant barriers, leading to costly manual interventions, potential errors, and restrictive vendor lock-in.

A recent study by the ASSESS Initiative has investigated these challenges by defining thirteen distinct interoperability scenarios (see Table 1) and evaluating how resources available to the engineering simulation address them.

The Challenge of Traditional Workflows

To understand the interoperability gap, one must look at the characteristics of a "traditional" simulation workflow:

• The basis of the simulation model is usually 3D geometry.

• The geometry is commonly discretised using cells, elements, points or particles.

• Model predictions are made by solving a system of equations which can be

computationally expensive and can involve days to weeks of run time. Large problems can require remote execution on specific infrastructure to obtain results in acceptable timeframes.

• The model files, and in particular the result files are large (typically gigabytes) and can be challenging to store and transfer.

• The simulation is usually carried out to assess the engineering performance of a component or sub-component against specific functional requirements.

The full report is available here.