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access information/knowledge/databases and processing functions, at any time and
wherever the respective software is located and data stored, thus enabling accurate
and efficient invocation of the engineering simulation services. It is expected that
the calculations will be performed extremely fast and cheap, by allowing the use of
parallel and grid computing resources [
56
], as the HPC and Cloud Computing
R&D is promising. In order to validate the simulation results, they will be com-
pared with experimental results and in addition, to other similar computations; this
will be done efficiently by accessing databases that manage large datasets of the
archived results. The possibilities for benchmarking and for exchanging knowl-
edge and opinions between investigators will be virtually infinite. Clearly thought,
a prerequisite that such environment can work is its adoption by the user com-
munity, which will have to agree on a specific codex that will enable and guarantee
openness and collaboration. Typically, it will have open access to:
• Computational Services: selection of simulation software and access to pro-
cessing and storage resources.
• Experimental Services: access to experimental databases with possibility to
request new measurements.
• Collaborative Services: chat and video-conferencing, with usage of shared
viewers (3D interactive collaboration).
The more and more evident software engineering challenge is on how to resolve
the complexity and interaction between the different existing engineering models
and how to process effectively the large amount of existing simulation results,
which are today in the continuous grow.
On the other hand it becomes very clear that the synergy of expert's knowledge
and experience, especially computer science and engineers, is of paramount
importance, in order to come up with solutions, which will smoothly integrate the
best practices within the engineering know-how, and transform them to the effi-
cient and easy-to-use software solutions.
Over the last 25 years, the author has initiated and worked on many research
projects with a determined focus on developing SV software and advancing the
state of the art in this challenging area. As described in this text, there are still
many potential avenues for future research to be followed, as addressed in the
presented EU projects, which have been the necessary seeds that such R&D
activities covering the multidisciplinary challenges could become reality in the
engineering practice.
Acknowledgments The acknowledgment goes to all the EU projects consortia and the related
participants, who took place in these challenging R&D projects span over the last two decades.
The fundings of the European Commission (EC) and the Flemish institute for Innovation and
Technology (IWT) are gratefully acknowledged; the LCLMS, ALICE, LASCOT, QNET-CFD,
SERKET, and 3D-TestBench projects have been instrumental in allowing carrying out such R&D
work. The author is grateful to Vrije Universiteit Brussel for providing the necessary research and
computer facilities for running the implementation of the engaged projects.
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