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The virtual production simulation platform: from collaborative distributed simulation to integrated visual analysis

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Abstract

Computational simulations are used for the optimization of production processes in order to significantly reduce the need for costly experimental optimization approaches. Yet individual simulations can rarely describe more than a single production step. A set of simulations has to be coupled to each other to form a contiguous representation of a process chain. Eventually, simulated results have to be analyzed by domain experts to gather insight from the preformed computations. In this paper, we propose an IT infrastructure and software tools that aim at a rather non-intrusive way of coupling resources and domain expert’s knowledge to enable the collaborative setup, execution and analysis of distributed simulation chains. We illustrate the approach in the domain of materials processing. Beyond means originating from the domain of GRID computing for resource management, a data integration component assures semantic data integrity between the simulation steps and stores simulation data in an application independent way. Thus, we can transform this data into native formats for each simulation tool, and finally into a format that allows for contiguous visualizations and an intuitive, comprehensive analysis of complete simulated process chains.

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Acknowledgments

The depicted research has been funded by the German Research Foundation DFG as part of the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Scientific Computing (SC), RWTH Aachen University, Seffenter Weg 23, 52074, Aachen, Germany

    Thomas Beer, Torsten Kuhlen & Christian Bischof

  2. Institute of Information Management in Mechanical Engineering (IMA), RWTH Aachen University, Dennewartstraße 27, 52068, Aachen, Germany

    Tobias Meisen, Rudolf Reinhard, Daniel Schilberg & Sabina Jeschke

  3. Department of Ferrous Metallurgy (IEHK), RWTH Aachen University, Intzestrasse 1, 52072, Aachen, Germany

    Sergey Konovalov

Authors
  1. Thomas Beer
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  2. Tobias Meisen
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  3. Rudolf Reinhard
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  4. Sergey Konovalov
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  5. Daniel Schilberg
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  6. Sabina Jeschke
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  7. Torsten Kuhlen
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  8. Christian Bischof
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Correspondence to Thomas Beer.

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Beer, T., Meisen, T., Reinhard, R. et al. The virtual production simulation platform: from collaborative distributed simulation to integrated visual analysis. Prod. Eng. Res. Devel. 5, 383–391 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11740-011-0326-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11740-011-0326-x

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