How Engineering Simulation Drives Impact for Sustainability

For decades, engineering simulation has been the engineer’s Swiss Army knife for improving the speed and cost of developing new products as well as for bringing product performance to the next level. This report reveals that while simulation has already made a significant contribution to advancing sustainability, there is still so much potential to make an even greater impact.

In the context of sustainability, simulation allows organizations to model and predict the environmental impact of their products and processes before physical prototypes are built. It has further use in optimizing designs and configurations of final products and systems according to environmental metrics.

The use cases analyzed in this report reveal that transitioning from an old to a new product generation with engineering simulation has more than doubled the sustainability impact, thereby reducing product-related downstream emissions by up to 10% in the cases assessed.

Organizations are often lacking the means to measure simulation’s impact on sustainability and identify future opportunities for achieving even more. To overcome this limitation, this report lays out a clear methodology for assessing the impact of simulation on sustainability.

The following insights were uncovered by applying the methodology for measuring the impact of simulation on sustainability in three use case examples at different companies:

• Infineon AG, where simulation of an optimal traction inverter configuration helped with doubling the efficiency, cutting total electrical losses by 50%, and enabling a 2-3% reduction of scope 3 downstream emissions of electric vehicles.

• Danfoss Drives, where simulation helped its new drive platform achieve up to a 45% reduction in use phase emissions compared to the previous generation, which is more than double what would have been achieved without leveraging simulation

 • Mars, where — in their aim to redesign more than 12,000 packaging types for enhanced sustainability — simulation has already made a significant impact by reducing the plastic required for physical prototypes and finished products.

Read more here.