VMAP enabling interoperability in integrated CAE simulation workflows

With the progress in CAE simulation leading to more complicated and integrated workflows, data control and transfer becomes essential. This is extremely important in the manufacturing industry where complicated simulation workflows are necessary in tracking material changes throughout the manufacturing process. Traditionally this has led to many one-off solutions created by engineers in their desire to solve their design-process problems within the defined timescales. Naturally, the result was that many methodologies for transferring information became available but were stand-alone and/or unavailable to different departments or entities.The VMAP data standard is the first to address this issue and solve the problem by standardising the data being transferred to enable complete software i nteroperability. Additionally, VMAP provides a library of IO routines to help engineers speed-up the creation of their workflows thereby removing the emphasis for considering data formats. This enables easier and more flexible data transfer, use of different software for different simulations and the creation of re-useable processes that can be easily adapted to include more or different data. Moreover, this enables software interoperability for post-processing and data manipulation and processing.VMAP is cost-free and is supported by the international VMAP Standards Community comprising independent software vendors (ISVs), developers, academia and other entities and provides the CAE industry with a focus group to provide guidance, collaborate, evolve and maintain VMAP.This paper describ es the VMAP standard and IO libraries, example of its successful implementation via various use cases. The important roles of the VMAP Standards Community are also described.