Presentation - pdf

In civil and mechanical engineering, the design process is done almost entirely by computer. A long-held goal in formulated product design is to shift from an ad hoc labour-intensive and expensive process towards a more robust and adaptive computer aided formulation paradigm. In collaboration, IBM Research in the UK, the Hartree Centre, and industry partners, driven by interactions with our partners’ wet-lab scientists are developing in-silico counterparts to the laboratory experiments they commonly perform as part of their R&D activity.

In this talk, I will present our strategy which is based on three distinct pillars. The first is about quickly and automatically producing predictive computational models for industrial systems. The second focuses on harnessing the latest IBM POWER(TM)-based High Performance Computing (HPC) systems and cognitive optimisation methodologies to accelerate these simulations. The final pillar centres on the production of easy-to-use computational appliances or tools, in the form of iPad apps, as a consumable service.

The goals of this work is enhanced de novo formulation design, shorter time to market, adaptive response to supply chain variability, and encouraging the adoption of formulation for sustainability. The ability to formulate virtually allows for acceleration of R&D processes, smoother development of new products, especially for high value manufacturing markets where growth arise from high R&D intensive efforts.

This work was supported by the STFC Hartree Centre’s Innovation Return on Research programme, funded by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

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