Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification in Engineering Simulation

How to build credible simulations?

3​ - 7 November 2025

Master Class - O​nline training course in English language

Course time each day:
2:00 pm - 5:30 pm, CET, UTC+1 (Berlin, Stockholm, Paris)
1​:00 pm - 4:30 pm, GMT, UTC+0 (London)
8:00 am - 11:30 am, EST, UTC-5 (New York)
5:00 am - 8:30 am, PST, UTC-8 (Los Angeles)

Overview

Engineering simulation is becoming essential for industries aiming to stay competitive and innovate through technology. It plays a crucial role at every stage of product design, qualification, and certification. More and more, key engineering decisions depend on computational simulations, shifting the role of physical tests from compliance demonstration to validation benchmarks for simulations. This shift has introduced terms like “virtual testing.”

As a result, engineers now have greater responsibility to ensure simulations are reliable and credible. Strengthened and secured processes are needed for verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification (VVUQ) to ensure the required credibility of simulation results. Program managers increasingly demand formal proof that simulations are fit for purpose, allowing them to make risk-informed decisions.

The rise of extended enterprise collaborations introduces new challenges, necessitating robust and reliable engineering simulation processes. However, due to economic constraints, VVUQ activities are often perceived as costly and are sometimes limited, resulting in uncontrolled risks. Moreover, implementing VVUQ is challenging, as it involves multiple actors, including managers, simulation experts, test specialists, software developers, and quality control engineers…

Course objectives and benefits

This Master Class is especially dedicated to VVUQ and credibility assurance methodologies in engineering simulations. Participants will:

• Expand their VVUQ knowledge, including key concepts, latest methodologies, and existing standards.
• Learn to specify, plan, and execute simulation VVUQ activities.
• Learn about code verification and the importance of solution verification.
• Gain a solid understanding of how to succeed in model validation, including the effective design and execution of validation experiments.
• Learn about the basic principles of uncertainty quantification in the area of engineering simulations
• Build business cases to justify VVUQ plans.
• Gain insight into simulation VVUQ organization, management, and best practices.
• Learn how to enhance visibility and confidence among decision-makers relying on simulation.
• Gain insight into customizing course methodologies to their industry context and improve their VVUQ processes.

This course builds on a previous NAFEMS course, successfully delivered over 60 times across Europe since 2013, and features an evolved tutor team.

Who should attend?

• Experienced engineers and senior analysts leading simulation activities or preparing for new responsibilities in simulation management.
• Engineering simulation managers looking to deepen their VVUQ knowledge.
• Programme/project managers and regulatory stakeholders making key decisions based on simulation results and seeking a better understanding of simulation VVUQ.

Participants should have solid experience in engineering simulation for industrial product design and development.

This course is relevant to all industry sectors concerned with simulation credibility, especially those where simulation is critical for product design, qualification, or certification.

Course features

The course is established on the solid knowledge of the tutors and the vision they have developed from their rich industrial experience.

The course is neutral and independent of any particular software solution.

The number of participants is limited to a small group to facilitate dialogue and exchanges between participants and tutors.

Master Class Programme

Module 1: Introduction, VVUQ foundations and standards

Chapter 1: Introduction and fundamental concepts

• Introduction, scope of the course
• The simulation process
• Simulation and decision making, simulation credibility, simulation criticality
  

Chapter 2: Verification & Validation of industrial products

• Basic concepts : ISO V&V concepts, qualification & certification of industrial products
• Systems Engineering: main concepts
• System hierarchical V&V
  

Chapter 3: Simulation VVUQ foundations & standards

• Basic VVUQ concepts for Engineering Simulation: Verification, Validation, Uncertainty Quantification, predictive capability, stiffened panel example
• V&V processes and responsibilities
• Guides and Standards
  −A short history of V&V standardization
  −Main guides and standards: AIAA CFD Guide, ASME VVUQ 10 & 20, NASA STD 7009, ASME VVUQ 40, ASME VVUQ 1...

Module 2: Verification

Chapter 4: Code verification

• Relevant aspects of software engineering and software quality assurance (SQA)
• Methods of exact and manufactured solutions
• Code verification activities in practice
  

Chapter 5: Calculation verification

• Elements of solution verification: Errors and uncertainties
• Iterative error
• Discretization error

Module 3: Validation

Chapter 6: Validation

• Overall validation process
• Validation planning.
• Validation execution, simulation & test collaboration
• Differences between calibration and validation
• Validation uncertainties: experimental uncertainties: ASME V&V 10.1 example
• Accuracy assessment & validation metrics:
  metrics for scalar quantities: deterministic, non-deterministic (area metric, ASME VVUQ 20, Z metric...), metrics for waveforms, ASME V&V 10.1 example,stiffened panel example

• Validation trends: Predictive capability, validation, and model acceptance (coverage analysis…)
• NAFEMS broad validation approach, the NAFEMS validation spectrum, validation rigour attributes.
  

Module 4: Uncertainty Quantification (UQ)

Chapter 7: What is UQ?

• Definition and importance of UQ in various fields
• Distinction between aleatory and epistemic uncertainty
• Overview of different UQ approaches (probabilistic, margin, etc.)
• Basic statistical concepts
• Representation of uncertain quantities (pdf, cdf, normal plot, etc.)
• Sampling error considerations
  

Chapter 8: Simulation Uncertainty Quantification (UQ)

• Sources of model uncertainty (parameter uncertainty, model form uncertainty, solution and code uncertainties)
• Model predictions under uncertainty (p-box, effect on decisions, etc.)
• UQ workflow (define QoI, identify sources of uncertainty, estimate input uncertainties, propagate uncertainties, analyze and interpret results)
• Calibration as a method to estimate model parameter uncertainties (Bayesian inference)
• Taylor Series approach and Variance Transmission Equation
• Monte-Carlo methods
• Sensitivity Analysis to identify key uncertainty contributors
  

Module 5: Simulation Management & Implementation Strategies

Chapter 9: Simulation management with focus on credibility

• Simulation management versus governance
• Management of simulation capabilities
• Key management processes for simulation credibility: Simulation Process and Data Management, competence management…
  

Chapter 10: VVUQ Implementation Strategies

• V&V implementation and management challenges
• Simulation/VVUQ and risk informed decision making: criticality assessment
• Simulation/VVUQ benefits & costs, basics of Business Case preparation
• Credibility assurance summary
• Recommended practices:
  − PIRT analysis for VVUQ planning
  − Credibility assessment, reporting to the decision maker: survey of credibility assessment procedures, focus on NASA STD 7009 (CAS) and PCMM
  − Organization and management

Tutors

This course is tutored by high-level simulation professionals both benefiting from extensive experiences gained from leading organizations. They are recognized as leading figures in the engineering simulation community .

• Jean François Imbert (Consultant)
• Ola Widlund (RISE Research Institutes of Sweden)
• Alexander Karl (Rolls-Royce Corporation)

Jean-Francois Imbert
has over 40 years of experience in Aerospace Engineering, with key roles in both technical expertise and management. His main areas of expertise are Structural Mechanics and Engineering Simulation, particularly Finite Element Analysis. Retired from Airbus, he is now an independent consultant specialized in VVUQ in Engineering Simulation. He is a member of the ASME VVUQ 10 (Solid Mechanics), ASME VVUQ 90 (Airframe Structures), and the NAFEMS SGMWG (Simulation Governance and Management Working Group), where he is actively involved in the development of VVUQ standards. He has been teaching over 60 NAFEMS Simulation V&V Courses during the last 12 years. He is presently a NAFEMS Technical Fellow and Emeritus member of AAAF (Association Aéronautique et Astronautique de France).

Ola Widlund
earned his PhD in Fluid Dynamics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 2000, with a thesis on the modeling of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. After a few years in Grenoble, France (a Marie Curie Fellowship at CNRS EPM and a temporary position at CEA), he joined ABB Corporate Research in Sweden in 2005. He held a position as Senior Principal Scientist, working on modeling challenges ranging from steel casting to electric charge transport in high-voltage devices. Since 2015, he has worked at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, near Gothenburg. As unit director, he leads a group of researchers in applied mechanics, with activities in mechanical reliability, quality assurance of simulation models, VVUQ, and advanced experimental methods. In this line of work, he also has experience of quality management for accredited testing (ISO 17025).

Alexander Karl
earned his PhD in Aerospace Technologies from the University of Stuttgart in Germany. After his PhD, he joined Rolls-Royce, where he currently holds the role of Rolls-Royce Fellow - Robust Design and Systems Engineering. Alexander has an extensive background knowledge in the areas of thermo-mechanical analysis, optimization, simulation automation, Robust Design and Systems Engineering and is an accredited Rolls-Royce Master Black Belt. Within NAFEMS, Alexander holds the following roles: Member of the NAFEMS Council, Member of the NAFEMS Americas Steering Group, Chair of the NAFEMS Stochastics Working Group, and Member of the NAFEMS Simulation Governance and Management Working Group. Over the years, Alexander delivered training courses and classes for ERCOFTAC and NATO AVT and is the co-author of several NAFEMS publications.

The course tutors are co-authors of the recent NAFEMS book, Guidelines for Validation of Engineering Simulations (NAFEMS, 2024), which will be distributed to participants as part of the course material.

The course is agreed and under the control of the NAFEMS Education and Training Working Group (ETWG).

Organisation

Day 1: 2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Day 2: 2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Day 3: 2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
D​ay 4: 2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
D​ay 5: 2:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Log phase each day from 1:30 pm.
Time zone: CET (Central European Time), UTC+1 (Berlin)

Language
English

Course Fee
Non NAFEMS members: 1.990 Euro/person*
NAFEMS member: 1.590 Euro/person*
Included in the fees are digital course notes and a certificate.
* plus VAT if applicable.

NAFEMS membership fees (companies / institutes)
A standard NAFEMS site membership costs 1,405 Euro per year, and an academic site and entry membership costs 880 Euro per year (as of 2025).

Cancellation Policy
Up to 6 weeks before the course starts: free of charge;
up to one week before: 75 %;
Later and no show: 100 %.

Course cancellation
If not enough participants, we keep the right to cancel the course one week before. The course can also be canceled in case of disease of the speakers or force majeure. In these cases, the course fees will be refunded.

Organisation / Contact
NAFEMS
e-mail: roger.oswald@nafems.org

Accreditation Policy

The course is agreed and under control of NAFEMS Education and Training Working Group (ETWG).