Wed, 23 April, 2025
Dr Anas Yaghi, Principal Modelling and Simulation Engineer at TWI and Vice-Chair of the NAFEMS Manufacturing Process Simulation Working Group, has been featured in NAFEMS’ Benchmark magazine.
Anas responded with regards to numerical modelling at TWI, alongside representatives from Airbus, The Boeing Company, the NASA Glenn Research Center, Convergent Manufacturing Technologies, Dutton Simulation, and Principia Ingenieros Consultores.
The article is the fourth in a series of ‘Speaking of Simulation’ articles, focusing on the topic of ‘Material Characterisation.’ These articles explore how leading organisations in the NAFEMS community integrate different simulation techniques in their work.
The article begins by asking about our material characterisation strategy and how we obtain material properties. Anas explained that first we ensure we have a clear understanding of each project’s goals and we work with our customers to establish their exact requirements. He continued, explaining that TWI will often take existing data sources as a starting point before moving on to sensitivity analyses and laboratory tests as required. Finally, Anas explained, TWI uses data management to ensure newly acquired material properties can be appropriately stored, accessed, and, if appropriate, reused for further research.
Anas then spoke on how TWI manages the inherent variability in material properties, by pointing to our decades of practical experience, expertise and technical excellence. This may include identifying relevant parameters, evaluating how variations may influence the final outcome, and undertaking targeted experimentation, if necessary and cost-effective.
On the topic of advanced techniques, Anas noted that our laboratory work aims to replicate rapid stress relaxation—sometimes within minutes—under conditions that reflect realistic service environments, while analytical equations help predict longer-term behaviour. He then revealed how TWI predicts structural performance across various microstructural scales and creates practical experiments before validating the results at the structural scale.
The focus of the article then turned to recent advancements and how they are finding their way into everyday engineering practice. Anas pointed to improvements in computing capacity and speed that are allowing engineers to tackle more complex problems each year, as well as noting how improvements in software is increasing versatility, accuracy, and efficiency, broadening the range of applications for modelling and simulation.
The article closed by touching on machine learning and how it is opening up new possibilities for faster and more systematic material characterisation. Anas explained how TWI uses a ‘reverse engineering’ approach, by taking an observed outcome and determining the combination of material properties most likely to produce it, factoring in statistical considerations. This is in contrast to the conventional simulation approach, which works forwards, using known material properties to predict outcomes, with Anas concluding that machine learning can significantly accelerate this process.
About NAFEMS
NAFEMS is the International Association for the Engineering Modelling, Analysis and Simulation Community. They are an independent not-for-profit organisation created in 1983 to promote and advance the use of engineering simulation. This includes improving the status of professionals in the field, establishing best practice, exchanging information and knowledge, and promoting collaboration and communication.
We are pleased to have been asked to contribute to this latest Speaking of Simulation article, which NAFEMS members can read in full, here:
NAFEMS - Speaking of Simulation Part 4 – Material Characterisation