T-Spline Isogeometric Analysis

Background The creation of new airplanes, ships, cars, and most other durable goods involves the technologies of computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided engineering (CAE). As a result of separate historical development paths, CAD and CAE use completely different geometric representations of the design. Accordingly, for a CAE system to use a CAD design, the CAD model must be decomposed into small "finite elements," such as quadrilaterals and triangles in 2D or hexahedral and tetrahedral shapes in 3D. This process is called mesh generation. Mesh generation is a substantial bottleneck in the design process. It is estimated that in the automotive, aerospace, and ship building industries, about 80% of overall analysis time is devoted to mesh generation.

Invention Description T-Spline Isogeometric Analysis is a geometric representation for CAD that can work directly on the underlying functional CAE representation of a model without mesh generation, thereby eliminating the need for mesh generation and substantially accelerating design time.

Market Potential/Applications Computer aided design (CAD)/Computer aided engineering (CAE)

Development Stage Lab/bench prototype

IP Status One PCT patent application filed

UT Researcher Thomas J. Hughes, Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, The University of Texas at Austin Michael Scott, Institute of Computational Engineering Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin

Type of Offer: Licensing



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