With the availability and easy accessibility of high performance computing resources, product development in engineering application shifted from experiments and model tests to computer simulations almost exclusively. Even after the initial construction of a satisfying design in the rapid prototyping phase, usually much potential for optimizations remains. To achieve an optimal design requires the execution of multiple simulation workflows with different parameters, concerning optimal operation at different operating points.

Gaining insight from simulation results into how the changes to a model affect the performance of the simulated machine requires an interactive exploration of these datasets through – ideally – in situ post-processing. As the complexity of simulation data increases, traditional post-processing of datasets on single workstations is no longer possible due to limitations in system memory, network bandwidth and compute power.

In this paper, we present how remote HPC resources can be used for interactive design, simulation and interactive analysis to support engineering workflows in product development.