Honda to Expand Engine Simulation T he Research and Development Asaka Center at Honda in Tokyo is seeking ways for Honda engineers to simulate engine performance completely on the computer without the need to build engine prototypes at any stage in the process. Honda makes about 10 million internal combustion engines each year. The Asaka Center also wants to shorten the time it takes to design and develop the motor. Honda's goal is to fully design and simulate engine performance on the computer in order to save time and cost, according to a company spokesperson. Spending Less Time on Thermal Analysis A pplied Micro Circuits of San Diego, a maker of silicon connectivity devices for telecommunications, reports that implementation of new thermal analysis software has resulted in a time savings in getting products from design to market.
Thermal considerations are very critical from a packaging standpoint.
Mass. To speed the software's analysis, Applied Micro Circuits uses another application, called Flopack, from the software vendor. The Web-based application speeds the running of thermal simulations done in the analysis software. Flopack provides users with integrated circuit package styles that can be filled in with dimensional and other data about the package and the silicon chip the user wishes to model. Flopack then creates the integrated circuit package model files, which can be downloaded into the thermal analysis software. Peterson spent one day building an integrated circuit package model file without using software and then comparing it to a file run in the analysis software.