Visualizing the Future in Steel Manufacturing

Computer simulation and virtual reality visualization have evolved to become critical emerging technologies in creating immersive virtual environments for numerous fields. The ability to allow people to "go inside" these virtual environments provides a unique, and effective tool for understanding complex physical processes, and thus to innovate and to make significant improvements in a time and cost efficient way. It empowers people to work collaboratively and intuitively, and enables engineers to produce better designs as well as better solutions for troubleshooting and process/product optimizations more efficiently. As industry forges its way into the future, advanced computer simulation and visualization technologies will play an ever-increasing role in addressing the issues of productivity, energy, environment and quality, as well as workforce training to meet the challenges of tomorrow. The use of these technologies has already begun, and examples in steel manufacturing will be presented.