Nowadays the importance of modeling reality with numerical simulation is continuously increasing in modern engineering practices. The complexity of new structures and the cost of experimental testing are inducing the design engineer to use virtual prototyping more frequently. The aim is to predict the response and the performance of a system as well as to reduce the costs of real prototypes. The "analysis leads design" paradigm can now be considered as a strong tendency for many applications in the automotive and aerospace industry. In this context, the verification and validation process of well known discretization techniques represents a fundamental step to build credibility on simulation prediction.

However, with the increasing competitiveness of a global market and with the introduction of new materials and technologies, a new challenge needs to be faced. The approximation limits of currently used simulation procedures are unable to take into account uncertainty and variability that arise in the design parameters of modern high-performance structures. In fact, deterministic computations cannot give enough information on the robustness of the design when variations of the design parameters may considerably affect the performance of the system. A new process needs to be developed to deal with non determinism in simulation procedures.

It is generally acknowledged that uncertainty and variability cannot be neglected anymore or incorporated into safety factors. Modern structures require optimal performances as well as robust designs and, at the same time, meet design requirements. The new target of this new design paradigm is to obtain the best and robust performance. In this framework, the various Non Deterministic Approaches (NDA* [0]) are considered by the international scientific community as key methodologies to ensure robust designs.

Currently, many institutions and industries, members of this community, are creating their own centers of experience to develop and improve NDA* [0] techniques. However, it’s a matter of fact that these centers do not form a cooperative and collaborative scientific network yet, being still too linked to the specific research projects initiated by local members. Thus a big part of the synergy produced by the exploitation of the connections is still not used due the lack of an efficient scientific network. This affects also the application of non-deterministic techniques for industrial applications.

It is clear that the contribution of the internet to the growth of many scientific communities resides mainly in the capacity of connecting scientists and helping them to exchange ideas and data. This is the type of connection that the NDA* [0] community is still missing and that can facilitate the introduction of non-determinism into the industrial design process, where needed.

The purpose of this site is to create such a community to facilitate connections, ideas and exchange of knowledge between its members. It is intended to be free in the contents as, we believe, that these topics should be accessible to everybody without costs. We believe these methods are a key to enable future improved designs, thus improving life quality and safety.

This web portal is a personal initiative of Roberto d'Ippolito. Thanks to his former and current professors, he had the opportunity to study and appreciate the benefits of Non Deterministc Approaches applied to engineering cases.