Computer Simulations – Back to the Future

I started using computers to do structural analysis more than twenty-five years ago. At that time we fed punch-cards into a card-reader that was attached to a main-frame computer. The software was primitive by today’s standards, but extremely powerful as compared to hand calculations. Calculations that might take hours or perhaps days to do by hand now took just minutes to run. However, running on a main-frame meant waiting in the queue behind all of the other people running programs, so perhaps it was the next day before I would see the results. Still, much faster than my TI calculator or my slide-rule that I had just retired.

Things have changed dramatically since the first time that I ran an analysis on a computer. I now use a lap-top to run some of the most advanced non-linear finite element analysis software. A blow molding simulation, thermoforming simulation or dynamic impact analysis, that just a few years ago might take days to run on a UNIX computer are now complete in a few of hours on my PC. The only queue that I wait in is one that I create for myself with the next runs that I want to make. Yes, I still do some hand calculations, just to make sure that the computer is giving me answers that are at least in the ball-park.

I look back in awe at where computer simulations have come. I think of my father, who once plowed farm fields with a horse and then saw men land on the moon. I think that I am living through the same level of change. Having seen the start, I wonder where the future of computer simulations will lead.