New product development process in tractor industry has immense challenges. Market forces are driving tractor manufacturers, to explore innovative technology, to shorten the product development time. At present, most of the tractor components are evaluated in laboratory, as per customer usage pattern. Even though these lab tests are accelerated, high development time of prototype is a severe constraint. Hence, there is more emphasis on application of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) for validating the design, in lieu of lab test i.e. ‘Bringing LAB to CAE. There are many challenges to achieve this particularly in tractor evaluation, due to scattered usage patterns, varied field conditions and unexpected customer habits. In addition, fatigue behaviour of tractor chassis, comprising of mainly castings is not only sensitive to design but also to process and assembly.
Once the lab to CAE correlation is established within acceptable band, the CAE model is cleared for evaluating the components without lab test, for any future evaluation need. This approach has speeded up the design validation process and there by time to market. The paper describes journey undertaken towards bringing ‘LAB to CAE’ along with benefits.