How Simulation Is Transforming Cardiovascular Innovation

Cardiovascular diseases — such as arrhythmia, coronary artery disease, and heart valve disorders — are leading causes of death worldwide and pose complex challenges for treatment because every patient’s heart responds differently to therapy. Traditional testing and development methods are often slow, costly, and limited in scope. But advanced virtual modeling and simulation technologies are changing the game in cardiovascular healthcare.

Why Simulation Matters in Heart Care

Innovators and healthcare professionals are using computational modeling and simulation (CM&S) to virtually recreate the human heart and simulate how it interacts with treatments or medical devices. These digital tools allow detailed study of anatomy, blood flow, tissue mechanics, and electrical activity — all without invasive procedures.

This shift to simulation enables deeper insight into disease progression and device performance across diverse conditions, helping engineers and clinicians predict outcomes more reliably and rapidly than ever before.

Modeling the Heart’s Complexity

The human heart is a dynamic, multi-scale organ — constantly moving, pumping blood, and responding to electrical signals. Replicating this accurately in a digital environment requires advanced tools that can handle:

• Variations in individual patient anatomy
• Blood flow and mechanical stresses
• Interactions between heart tissues and medical devices

Sophisticated simulation platforms can integrate these factors into precise virtual models, helping teams better evaluate device safety and functionality.

Cutting Risks and Costs with Virtual Prototyping

Simulation speeds up device development by allowing manufacturers to test virtual prototypes before building physical versions. This approach:

• Reduces the need for animal and human testing
• Lowers development time and costs
• Improves design optimization before clinical trials

Using digital tools, medical device developers can explore how devices perform under different physiological conditions, including many patient-specific scenarios.

Supporting Regulatory Approval

Regulatory agencies — including the U.S. FDA and Australia’s TGA — are increasingly accepting simulation data as part of approval submissions. Virtual evidence can demonstrate device safety and effectiveness without relying solely on traditional testing. This not only accelerates approval timelines but also enhances confidence in product safety.

Simulation also enables analysis of large virtual patient cohorts, helping teams understand performance across diverse populations — something difficult and expensive with physical trials.

Toward Personalized Heart Care

One of the most promising advances is the creation of digital twins — virtual replicas of a patient’s heart that evolve with changing health data. These models, built from clinical imaging and real-time sensor data, allow clinicians to:

• Test how different treatments might affect an individual
• Predict outcomes before intervention
• Tailor procedures to individual heart conditions

Wearable devices and implantable sensors can continuously update these digital twins, offering real-time insights and guiding more personalized medical decisions.

The Future of Cardiovascular Innovation

Simulation technologies are more than tools — they’re redefining how cardiovascular diseases are treated and how medical devices are developed. By enabling virtual testing, refining designs earlier, and supporting regulatory confidence, CM&S is accelerating innovation while making treatments safer, more effective, and tailored to individual patients.

Speeding Up Turbomachinery Innovation with AxSTREAM + Ansys CFD Integration

In today’s competitive engineering landscape — spanning aerospace, energy, and automotive sectors — turbomachinery designers must deliver higher performance, better efficiency, and faster development cycles. Traditional fragmented workflows, where early design and detailed simulation happen separately, are no longer sufficient for modern performance demands.

The Challenge

Designing complex turbomachinery systems (like turbines, compressors, and fans) requires juggling:

• Aerodynamics
• Thermodynamics
• Structural integrity
• Heat transfer
• Fluid-structure interaction

All of these factors must align within tight deadlines and high performance specs. Historically, moving from conceptual design to detailed 3D simulation involves manual data transfers between tools — a slow and error-prone process.

A Unified Design + Simulation Workflow

To overcome these hurdles, AxSTREAM (a turbomachinery design environment by SoftInWay) is tightly integrated with Ansys CFX, a high-fidelity CFD solver. This partnership creates an end-to-end workflow where:

• Engineers begin with 1D and 2D design and proceed through 3D geometry generation in AxSTREAM
• Blade geometry, boundary conditions, and mesh data seamlessly transfer into Ansys CFX
• Simulation runs directly within the same workflow, preserving data continuity and design intent
• Results (pressure, velocity, temperature, efficiency, etc.) are visualized and analyzed back in AxSTREAM

This integration eliminates manual file exports and imports, reducing errors and accelerating the entire design cycle.

How It Works in Practice

A typical turbomachinery design process now looks like:

1. Initial Design in AxSTREAM — define performance goals and flow path parameters.
2. Blade Geometry Generation — create and refine blades based on aerodynamic criteria.
3. Mesh Generation — structured or semi-structured meshes optimized for blade passages.
4. CFD Simulation in Ansys CFX — assess detailed flow behavior, losses, and performance metrics.
5. Results Post-Processing — visualize outputs like pressure distribution or velocity vectors to refine design decisions.

Real-World Example: Three-Stage Axial Turbine

In designing a three-stage axial turbine, engineers can:

• Build and refine geometry in AxSTREAM
• Automatically generate tailored mesh elements
• Launch CFX simulations directly from the AxSTREAM interface
• Analyze turbine performance under realistic operating conditions
• Iterate rapidly to achieve optimal outcomes

The result? Faster innovation, fewer design iterations, and a smoother transition from concept to detailed validation.

Beyond Simulation — Toward Manufacturing

AxSTREAM also allows geometry to be exported in neutral formats (NDF) compatible with Ansys TurboGrid and other blade meshing tools. This capability supports final mesh refinement and prepares designs for manufacturing with high-quality solids and detailed geometries.

Why This Matters

By embedding simulation earlier in the design process, engineers can:

• Catch performance issues before they become costly
• Preserve design intent throughout iterations
• Reduce overall development time and risk
• Make smarter decisions with validated simulation data

For teams pushing boundaries in turbomachinery innovation, this integrated AxSTREAM + Ansys workflow is a powerful advantage — enabling better performance, higher predictability, and quicker delivery to market.

Crafting a Smart Data Strategy for Materials Innovation — Insights from TECNALIA

Innovation in materials is crucial for advancing industries, from sustainable construction to cutting-edge technology. Yet turning raw experimental data into actionable knowledge remains a major challenge — one that Spain’s largest research center, TECNALIA, has tackled head-on.

The Materials Data Challenge

Every materials research project generates a rich array of data: physical properties, performance tests, chemical compositions, and more. But traditionally, this data was kept in isolated folders tied to individual projects. While this preserved confidentiality, it made data reuse, traceability, and organization extremely difficult.

TECNALIA recognized that this fragmented, siloed approach limited innovation potential — leading to repetitive testing and incomplete insights. With legacy lab machines and varied data formats, integrating data digitally without disrupting workflows was yet another hurdle.

From Repositories to Data Products

Rather than building a simple centralized repository, TECNALIA adopted a more strategic vision: data products. Unlike basic collections of numbers, data products are structured assets with defined templates, metadata, and contextual information that tell a story — and support decisions.

To accelerate adoption, researchers first built these products using familiar tools like Excel and Access. This minimized barriers to entry and encouraged a shift toward data-driven experimentation.

Benefits from this approach include:

• Rapid access to consistent and validated data
• Interconnected datasets across projects
• Real-time updates and quality control
• Higher reuse of knowledge and reduced redundant testing

Most importantly, this strategy transforms data from a byproduct of research into a strategic asset for innovation.

The Role of a Central Platform

To manage these data products, TECNALIA chose the Ansys Granta MI materials information management platform. This system supports traceability, version control, metadata management, and secure access — all critical for maintaining data integrity.

Key advantages of the platform include:

• Compatibility with existing workflows without replacing lab equipment
• Support for interoperability with Python and other tools
• On-premises data storage for intellectual property control
• Easier integration with simulation tools for future innovation efforts

By enabling principal investigators to curate and manage their own data products, the initiative also helps foster a culture of data ownership and trust.

Real-World Impact

Since implementing this strategy, TECNALIA has seen significant benefits:

• Faster, more reliable data capture and analysis
• Greater confidence in information reuse
• Enhanced collaboration across teams
• A shift in service delivery — from simply reporting results to offering evidence-based pathways for product improvement

Rather than just telling clients whether a material passes or fails, TECNALIA can now provide data-backed insights that suggest how to enhance performance.

Looking Ahead

Data products and a robust data strategy are helping TECNALIA turn decades of experimental results into a knowledge foundation for future innovation. With plans to extend client access to curated data and further integrate simulation workflows, the organization is set to redefine how materials data drives decision-making and product development.