Doctor Tri Tien (Tri is pronounced as Tree) was awarded a PhD in Computational Engineering by the University of Southern Queensland. Tri has more than 10 years of senior engineering experience gained in various industries in Viet Nam, South Korea, New Zealand, United States and Australia. To date, Tri has had 30 peer-reviewed papers published internationally on the subject of computational engineering.

Tri has strong formal engineering skills in areas of material properties and behaviour, as well as thermodynamics and fluid dynamics. In parallel with his engineering experience, Tri has also become adept at computer simulations in areas such as finite element analysis and computer fluid dynamics. Coupled with an enquiring mind and a practical inclination, Tri has a high level ability to understand and solve complex engineering problems and to support his conclusions with visually helpful simulations and animations.

Tri is the current holder of Registered Professional Engineer of Queensland (RPEQ 24545) and Registered Professional Engineer of Professionals Australia (RPEng 2408).

We provide high-end engineering insights and computational analysis to customers world-wide who do not have these skills in-house. We aim to provide these specialised services at an affordable cost to enable formal engineering skills and detailed computer analysis to be viably applied to both new product development and problem solving. The end results of our work can be reduced development costs, faster product development and problem solving, reduced number of new product faults and reduced exposure to product liability claims. Product quality and longevity can be improved, often at no added manufacturing cost and, quite possibly, less.

In all fields of endeavour, if the wrong questions are asked, you can’t expect to receive a relevant answer. This is certainly true of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) because the software only generates reliable solutions if provided with the correct input data. If the CAE operator does not fully understand engineering principles, does not correctly identify the problem(s) to be solved and does not fully understand the limitations of the particular software being used, most likely the input data will be wrong and the computer generated results incorrect. As the old saying goes: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

We exist to enable our clients to avoid this sort of problem. Before we commence any computational analysis, we make sure we fully understand the problem to be solved and make sure that the software we use is the right tool for the task.

Manufacturers and engineering project providers, naturally, want to manufacture a product or deliver a completed project that fully meets the needs of their customers for the least possible cost. When a new product is being developed, or a complete engineering project is being considered, it is often not possible to rely completely on past experience. In some cases the changes might be minor. In other cases, the new product or project can be a major step into the unknown.

When moving into unknown territory to any degree, assumptions will need to be made. Whether the assumptions are correct or not will need some form of testing. With a low cost, easily manufactured, product, the simplest solution can be to make the new product and test it. However, if the product is expensive, or is a complex one-off project, making a one-off prototype for testing can be prohibitively expensive, excessively time consuming and, perhaps, very embarrassing if the prototype has major flaws. In this sort of situation, computer simulations can be a very helpful tool, saving time and cost and identifying major flaws before physical manufacture commences. Numerically based computer simulations allow ideas to be tested in great detail in the computer – most likely in more detail than can be tested in real life. Multiple assumptions can be simulated and compared, allowing the optimum solution to be identified.

If performed by an engineer with a full understanding of engineering fundamentals, computer simulations can lead to better product and complete project solutions being achieved in much less time and at reduced cost. The more complex the problem to be solved, the greater the benefits are likely to be.