Virtual Engineering

Abstract

This article discusses future of virtual engineering. Not only will the plant of the future be different from the current one, but also the design tools that engineers use will be different. To reduce cost and shorten development time for the future plants, the DOE is developing virtual engineering as an enabling technology. To integrate all the parts in an intuitive manner will require a software framework, which is being developed by the Virtual Engineering Research Group at Iowa State University. The software is a virtual engineering toolkit called YE-Suite. It is composed of three main software engines—VE-CE, VE-Xplorer, and VE-Conductor—that coordinate the flow of data from the engineer to the virtual components being designed. YE-CE is responsible for the synchronization of the data among the various analysis and process models and the engineer. VE-Xplorer is the decision-making environment that allows the engineer to interact with the equipment models in a visual manner. YE-Conductor is the engineer’s mechanism to control models and other information.