Rensselaer at Hartford Receives Continuation of Grant Awarded by the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology

HARTFORD, CONN – The Hartford campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute recently received a $100,000 grant for two years (2009-2010) by the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT) to assist them in investigating the challenges faced by aerospace suppliers when implementing virtual manufacturing in their shops. The current grant, “Modeling and Simulation of Metal Manufacturing Operations for Supply Chain Improvement,” is a continuation of one received for the period 2006-2008 that focused on machining modeling. This time around, while continuing work on machining, attention will also be devoted to metal casting and metal forming.

Rensselaer Associate Professor, Ernesto Gutierrez-Miravete, Ph.D., Department of Engineering and Science (www.ewp.rpi.edu/hartford/~ernesto/), said, “As more mature manufacturing process simulators for casting, forming, welding, machining, etcetera, have become available and with the increasing power of desktop PCs, virtual manufacturing is becoming a reality. This approach has the potential of replacing some costly prototyping and plat trials by computer-guided experimentation. Engineers can thus focus experimental efforts on the more promising product and process designs deduced from computer simulations.”