Simulation Advantages, Limitations

Advantages of Simulation

Simulation offers various advantages. They have applications in every field. But this article covers the advantages of simulation in mechanical design only.

System Behavior Analysis

Simulations are used to analyze the behavior of a system without actually building it. Engineers can work on alternative solutions and simulate various designs. Therefore advantages of simulation include finalizing the best solution for prototyping before actually building it.

Reduces Manufacturing Cost

Simulation offers the advantage of designing products first time right. Therefore manufacturing and testing costs are reduced significantly.

Faster Products to Market

Advantages of Simulation studies include reduced number of design iterations. Therefore Design cycle time reduces significantly. This gives companies advantage of launching products in the market faster.

Design Analysis: Visual Output

Simulation results can be exported in graphical representation. It helps in analyzing system and product performance.

Problem Solving

Simulations are used to analyze a problem at various levels. This leads to faster and effective problem solving.

Value Engineering

Simulation studies helps in reducing manufacturing cost of existing and new products. For example mold-flow analysis is used to reduce injection molding cycle time.

Disadvantages of Simulation studies

Along with so many advantages, simulation studies also have some disadvantages. But the fact is overall simulation studies are good for a design.

Higher Initial Investment

Disadvantages of simulation software involve high initial investment. Such as high software cost and computing power requirements. Therefore small companies can not afford them.

Accurate Boundary conditions and input Data

Simulation results accuracy depends on input data and boundary conditions. System boundary conditions include environmental temperature, pressure and material.

Therefore boundary conditions need to be defined accurately to achieve good results. It requires a lot of experience.

Not 100% Accurate

Simulation softwares are not 100% accurate. You should expect some discrepancies in simulation results and tested products. With time engineers can refine their simulation results.

Main advantages of simulation include:

• Study the behavior of a system without building it.
• Results are accurate in general, compared to analytical model.
• Help to find un-expected phenomenon, behavior of the system.
• Easy to perform “What-If” analysis.

Main disadvantages of simulation include:

• Expensive to build a simulation model.
• Expensive to conduct simulation.
• Sometimes it is difficult to interpret the simulation results.