Many industries such as automotive, manufacturing, healthcare etc. perform a lot conceptual designs and design changes. They manufacture them on the basis of their requirements under different working environments. However, the key question always arises of whether will the design have the strength and stability to withstand that environment or are there any modifications needed. It is always difficult to carry out experimental measurements to validate the design especially in terms of strength, fatigue and various effects. With the advent of Finite element analysis (FEA), it has become a lot easier now to simulate the design in the environment and understand its FEAsibility or reasons for failure. FEA has become an important tool to product development and design, especially when the product is subjected to various conditions such as aircrafts and automotive vehicles.
For performing FEA, various highly qualified FEA consultants as well as software’s are required. Based on the type of requirements and analysis, expertise and understanding are required not only to perform the simulation, but also to understand the results and recommend design changes. It is very difficult these days for every organization in the sectors mentioned earlier to have an in-house FEA simulation team to perform these analyses. Along with maintenance of software and servers, a separate space and cost is required for the engineers. Especially in times of economic troubles, it is better to outsource the FEA simulations to FEA simulation services or stress engineering services. These services not only help in lowering the cost of the organizations, but also give a competitive edge and quality solution from a team of FEA consultants who are specialized in this field and provide the required skill and experience for the job.
Outsourcing mechanical services can give several benefits for the organization. Lower cost for maintaining the team and software, lower administrative costs, no requirements for training of employees and no overhead requirements are some of the primary benefits of outsourcing to mechanical engineering services. As per recent surveys, outsourcing to mechanical engineering services has led to a reduction of labor and investment cost of about 30 to 50%. This revenue saved can be successfully rerouted for other core functions in the organization. Another benefit of outsourcing to these mechanical engineering services is the faster turnaround time due to a dedicated team working on the simulations and providing reports. This is beneficial as the deadlines can be met for sure without any delays and sometimes even lead to earlier than planned. Finally, as resources are well planned and managed, it enables organizations to expand themselves and reach a wider array of customers for projects.
Some of the organization require specialized mechanical engineering services which are mainly focused towards strength, material behavior and design optimization based on the reports. For the purpose of this, there are various stress simulation services which provide expertise and consultants which are mainly focused on the stress and the impact of stress on the designs of the clients. Thus, ensuring structural and operating integrity during the lifetime of the design. These stress engineering services provide benefits such as product life cycle knowledge, new product developments, ISO level design validation and finally quality assessment of the products before they are sent to manufacturing. The stress engineering services also help in determining various stress points in the overall design to predict failures and provide recommendation for preventive measures that can be taken by the organization
Outsourcing of FEA simulation services such as structural FEA simulations, electromagnetic simulations, fluid structure interaction, thermal analysis, composite analysis and design optimization has led to a lot of benefits for various organizations. These benefits include reducing design to market period, avoiding unexpected failure during operation, simulating of extreme environments such as turbomachinery and predicting fatigue life, predicting corrosive failures in offshore environments and various others. The focus of the FEA simulation services is checking the FEAsibility of the designs and suggesting any design or material changes which can enhance the operation and life of the design. The FEA consultants carry out various “what-if” scenarios to validate the designs for the organizations before manufacturing and determining a particular safe zone performance in terms of strength, cost, safety to life and various other parameters. Using their knowledge, the FEA consultants provide various suggestions in terms of optimizing the design as well as probabilistic recommendations for increasing the usable life of the product.
When do organizations need to outsource FEA simulation services? Organizations can outsource the services whenever there is a requirement of a mechanical or stress related specialization that is necessary for a design. Therefore, instead of training and developing in house expertise and utilizing time and cost, it is better than to outsource the same to a reliable mechanical engineering service or a reliable stress simulation service to do the same. Another reason organization can outsource the FEA simulation services is when they have a lack of resources. Complex designs and details require huge servers and software’s to carry out the analysis. This further adds to the cost and computational time requirement to the organization making it difficult to carry out the design validation. However, if the same is outsourced to any of FEA or mechanical engineering services which have the resources to perform the FEA simulations, the turnaround and the cost gets reduced a lot.
Outsourcing of FEA simulation services has a lot of benefits and based on the organization requirements, they can find a right fit which can be a part of the overall design and development process. As newer techniques for mechanical and stress simulations evolve, the services are evolving too to the point that these services are the wiling to adjust and tailor their services as per the requirements of the clients.