A virtual research institute and its utilization in CAE for worm gear drives and gear design optimisation

As part of the research supported by the European Union's Asia-Link and Asia IT&C programmes, a virtual research institute (VRI) for geographically dispersed research teams, universities and industrial partners to collaborate over the Internet is developed. In addition to virtual communication, online teaching facilities and a software bank, the VRI also includes a platform for online collaboration. In this paper, an overview of the VRI is given first, and then the development of the online collaboration platform is presented and further illustrated by its utilization in CAE for worm gear drives and online remote execution of a large size gear design optimization package.