Awatif *formerly iFEM

The challenge

Engineers invent, design, test, and build machines, systems and structures that are implemented in the physical world. The initial testing of these technologies before construction are often completed using computer simulations as real-world testing is often costly and not feasible. Thus computational software development has been a primary method in solving complex engineering design challenges. Simulation software used in practice today faces many limitations. Firstly, problems are often oversimplified with assumptions and uncertainties to decrease computation time affecting simulation accuracy. Secondly, existing numerical procedures often struggle to consistently predict accurate results. And thirdly, time and effort required to perform a dynamic simulations are a major constraint. In theory, engineers and researchers can create models to simulate, but producing uninterrupted time-history analysis in practice requires a massive computational demand, and is not worth the effort in testing. As engineering challenges today are becoming increasingly complex, computational software is quickly becoming a bottleneck for realistic dynamic simulation studies. Current technology used for dynamic simulations is time-consuming, inefficient, and thus generally ignored for static simulations.

The solution

The engineering world has built their existing software on dated techniques, and limits their ability to reach higher computational speeds. The iFEM method combines computational techniques from other industries into mechanical engineering software. With our preliminary prototypes iFEM simulations performed 10x faster. Our vision is to provide engineers with modern dynamic simulation software that quickly produces real-time results, while being flexible enough to allow real-time adjustments during simulations.