Asahi Kasei Engineering (AEC) has launched a cloud-based CAE solution platform, offering highly precise apps to predict crash and impact behavior of polymers. 

As the adoption of polymer materials in automobiles and other products increases, precise simulation of material behavior will contribute to enhanced product design and to significantly reduced costs and time for material and application development. In recent years, cloud-based high-performance computing (HPC) is being increasingly used throughout various industries. 

As a result, the on-demand use of computer aided engineering (CAE) software installed in cloud HPC as software as a service is also becoming more common in the material development process.  As a manufacturer of technical polymers, Asahi Kasei has provided comprehensive, high precision support for its customers’ product design and development through CAE technical service focused on engineering plastics. 

Leveraging this expertise, AEC, a subsidiary of Asahi Kasei, further extends its CAE-related service by launching the cloud-based “CAE Solution Platform,” offering various apps that can be easily downloaded and used by customers worldwide. 

The apps offered on the platform include the downloadable and highly accurate polymer material fracture prediction model “i-LUPE.” Microscopically, amorphous polymer materials have a structure in which molecular chains are intricately entangled. When an impact or other force is applied to this material causing significant deformation, the molecular chains are stretched, resulting in the formation of voids and fibrils (bundles of molecular chains). When these so-called crazes grow, the polymer material fractures. By focusing on these crazes, "i-LUPE" accurately predicts and reproduces possible resulting fractures in the polymer.