In recent years, nuclear power development has become an important component of China’s energy strategy, and a way of reducing emissions while still meeting the nation’s energy requirements.
Harbin Electric Group, one of China’s largest manufacturers of power devices, has been named as the Autodesk September Inventor of the Month for using Autodesk Product Design Suite to digitally prototype and accelerate the design of innovative nuclear power devices that can help China meet these energy-related goals.
Harbin Electric Group conducts this work through the Beijing Institute of Nuclear Power Devices, a Harbin Electric subsidiary founded as a research and development arm to promote the design and development of new nuclear power technologies.
“The way nuclear power works is not complicated, but the safety and reliability requirements are very high, so we need to be very careful about every detail of design, production and manufacturing,” said Miao Lijie, Deputy General Manager of Harbin Electric Group. “As such, the engineering validation, analysis and even optimization are critical in the design stage of nuclear power devices.”
To make sure it develops nuclear devices that are as safe as they are innovative, Harbin Electric standardized on Autodesk Product Design Suite, a comprehensive solution delivering digital prototyping through 3D design, simulation, collaboration and visualization tools to complete the entire engineering process.
Product Design Suite software also includes AutoCAD Mechanical, one of the world’s leading 2D CAD mechanical design software applications that helps engineers at Harbin Electric seamlessly switch between 2D and 3D designs.
Additionally, Autodesk Vault data management software allows the company to safely store and manage engineering design information, data and files. This has allowed the team to move beyond basic management of drawings — such as who drew them and when — and into more detailed management such as assigning an electronic signature to each designer.
As the Head of the Beijing Institute of Nuclear Power Devices, Bai Haiyong, succinctly puts it: “Autodesk technology simplifies complicated things.”
And as any designer or engineer will tell you: sometimes simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
