ESI Group, pioneer and world-leading solution provider in virtual prototyping for manufacturing industries, announces the program of its 23^rd PUCA, ESI’s Japanese User Forum. This year’s edition will take place on 21 & 22 November at the Hilton hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Demonstration of an engineering review using IC.IDO during last year's PUCA (Photo: ESI Group)

The conference will bring together experts, senior practitioners and decision-makers from industry, as well as representatives from prestigious institutes and universities; allowing them to share experiences and to exchange information on their current imperatives.

Vincent Chaillou, COO ESI Group, will open the Plenary Session by presenting his view on the synergies between Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), R&D and innovation in today’s highly competitive industrial context.

Masayoshi Suehiro from Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation will share his expert knowledge of manufacturing processes through a presentation focusing on the “Practical use of CAE towards application of high strength steel to automotive bodies”. The audience will learn how these new materials are enabling automotive manufacturers to efficiently reduce the weight of their new vehicles.

François Gurkini, from ArcelorMittal Japan, will then present the company’s latest use of CAE for “Hot Stamping with Usibor1500PR”, a steel product specifically developed for use in automotive structural and safety components, with the aim to meet vehicle weight reduction requirements.

Mitsuhiro Takayama from Honda R&D Co., Ltd and Masato Uemura from F.TECH.Inc. will close the Plenary Session with a presentation entitled “Study of durability estimation by accounting for production process of press parts”. They will highlight the need to precisely assess manufacturing processes, their consequences and possible coupling effects when setting performance targets, including durability.

The afternoon sessions will focus on the key industrial challenges of ESI’s customers across various industry sectors, with a focus on transportation, energy and heavy industry.

The transportation session will gather presentations from Autoliv Japan, Nissan Motors Co., Honda R&D Co., F.TECH.Inc, Mazda Motor Corporation, Y-tec Corporation and Osaka University. In the energy session, ESI will welcome presentations from Japan Atomic Agency, Toyo University, Gifu University, Shizuoka University and Tohoku University.

The second day of the conference will investigate the latest applications of ESI’s complete offering by trade, including Virtual Manufacturing, Virtual Performance and Virtual Environment. Speakers will include current ESI users, partners and prestigious Universities: ATHENASYS Co., Mazda Motor Corporation, Yokohama National University, AP&T, Press Kogyo Co., Nissan Motor Co., Railway Technical Research Institute, Doshisha University, Panasonic Corporation, Humanetics Innovative Solutions Japan Inc., NEC Saitama, Pacific Consultants Co. and Waseda University.

Following ESI’s recent acquisition of OpenCFD Ltd., the leader in open source computational fluid dynamics, a parallel session running on both days will be dedicated to exploring the OpenFOAM business model, to CAE model management using OpenFOAM (pre & post processing and GUI), and to other technical aspects of the OpenFOAM open source toolkit that is maintained and supported by OpenCFD.

Throughout the event, attendees will have the opportunity to experience IC.IDO, ESI’s Virtual Reality solution, which uses the latest immersive 3D visualization technologies to build a platform for collaborative virtual engineering.

To view the full agenda of PUCA 2012, please click here.

For more ESI news, visit: www.esi-group.com/newsroom

About ESI Group

ESI is a pioneer and world-leading solution provider in virtual prototyping for manufacturing industries that takes into account the physics of materials. ESI has developed an extensive suite of coherent, industry-oriented applications to realistically simulate a product’s behavior during testing, to fine-tune manufacturing processes in accordance with desired product performance, and to evaluate the environment’s impact on performance. ESI’s solutions fit into a single collaborative and open environment for End-to-End Virtual Prototyping, thus eliminating the need for physical prototypes during product development. The company employs about 900 high-level specialists worldwide covering more than 30 countries. ESI Group is listed in compartment C of NYSE Euronext Paris.

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