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Product engineers are under consistent pressure to reduce the costs, improve the quality and increase the throughput of manufacturing processes. This fast-paced environment is not well suited for trial-and-error manufacturing engineering. How are engineers responding to these challenges? Is simulation and simulation-driven design for manufacturing (SDfM) well established across the industry? When simulation is deployed, does it deliver on the promises of reducing costs while improving throughput and quality? And what are the barriers to the adoption of simulation during the early stages of product development? In this 2021 survey report conducted by Engineering.com, we discuss those questions and discover: • Top design priorities • Top benefits of SDfM • Top barriers to expanding and adopting SDfM • Risks to staying competitive in the market

Heavy equipment manufacturers want to design products that are durable and perform at their peak under a variety of conditions. To accomplish this, Altair provides an integrated multi-disciplinary simulation environment to virtually test and optimize equipment performance and therefore, help reduce design and development costs. Using simulation-driven design, studying the full dynamics of a product or system is possible, from motion analysis to complete lifecycle durability testing.

A key development goal of any machine-building project is to produce perfectly running, reliable machines that make high-quality products. By leveraging accurate virtual prototypes, seamless production can be ensured earlier in the development process to help assess and improve product profitability.

In this white paper, we have developed a numerical technique to accurately model the experimental near-field amplitude and phase spectra in near-field infrared nano-spectroscopy. Our numerical method using Altair Feko is especially useful for describing surface phonon-polaritons. Also, extension of our numerical technique to materials with anisotropic dielectric function and/or heterogeneous structure is possible in the future. This method is efficient to elucidate fundamental physical phenomena measured in near-field infrared nano-spectroscopy experiments on novel, complex materials.

Heavy mobile machines consist mostly of production equipment working almost twenty hours a day, year on year, in diverse harsh environments, undergoing extreme loads and overloads. Especially diggers and loaders such as hydraulic excavators, wheel loaders, and backhoes, cater to multiple applications with use cases such as digging, trenching, loading, lifting, breaking, and ripping. Many times, these machines undergo non-standard uses where the machine is subjected to unplanned forces and moments as in the case of self-loading on a trailer, or a bucket hitting a dump truck body. This paper highlights the workflow process and simulation-driven methods to integrate multi-physics with Altair’s industry-leading solutions. The latest generation of Altair simulation tools can capture a wider range of vehicle systems and environmental interactions.

Radomes are used across multiple industries, including aerospace, defense, electronics, and telecommunications. When properly designed, the radome can actually enhance the performance of an antenna system. The proper selection of a radome for a given antenna can help improve the overall electromagnetic system performance by eliminating wind loading, allowing for all-weather operation, and providing shelter for installation and maintenance. Altair’s radome simulation solution helps to streamline the design of these complex components, ensuring performance while significantly reducing development time.

Industry 4.0 has led companies to investigate the automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices using modern smart technologies via Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) making agricultural and mining equipment, trucks, and other heavy industrial assets smarter via effective connectivity solutions.

Reprint of the July 2021 cover feature in Microwave Journal Simulation-driven virtual prototyping is employed in the design of modern smart products to accelerate product development speed, ensure intrinsic product qualities and improve the decision-making process during development. It results in smart products that are more cost effective with higher quality and reliability.

Information silos present a major challenge to Heavy Equipment OEMs. Poor integration of simulation models across the product life cycle, limited reuse of models between programs, and a variation of modeling maturity across various engineering disciplines result in lack of traceability and ultimately hampers development efficiency and product performance. Using system modeling and asset-centric data analytics solutions help develop and orchestrate coherent models to increase decision-making confidence and speed.

Learn how Altair AcuSolve™ performs with AMD EPYC™ 7003 series processors

Fluid mechanics simulation is a critical tool for late-stage failure risk mitigation, as well as a driver of design insights throughout the product development process. Used across all levels of product design and validation, from design engineers seeking to understand fluid and thermal effects on a design proposal to analysts performing advanced aerodynamic modeling, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) serves a broad array of applications and a range of users with varied levels of expertise. The sometimes complex and computationally intensive nature of CFD necessitates careful consideration of the software and hardware investments required to produce accurate solutions and scale them at the speed of a company’s development process.

Investment casting is a valued manufacturing process known for its ability to produce detailed components with accuracy, repeatability, and in a variety of different metals, waxes, and high-performance alloys. Producing high-quality casted components is less prone to common design errors when a simulation-driven approach is used, leading to easier, more accurate analysis and optimization during the design phase.

Two- and three-wheeler vehicle manufacturers, whether they are existing OEMs, new EV start-ups, or suppliers serving this segment, all have the goal of shortening product development time and getting product to market faster. With Altair HyperWorks™, ride, durability, and vehicle dynamics simulations for two- and three-wheeled vehicles can now be seamlessly performed using an intuitive and easy to use GUI with built-in libraries for vehicle models, analyses, and predicting and optimizing vehicle behavior.

Speaker design and analysis, especially for a more complex product, system, or component, often requires building multiple simulation models. The loudspeaker development process involves multi-physics and multiple sources in parallel, to multiple simulation runs for prototyping, testing, and validation. This results in separate models for nonlinear analysis of strength, thermal analysis and stiffness, noise, vibration, and acoustics. Even though each model isn’t always built from scratch, typically the use of different solvers for each attribute will require that models need to be converted from one solver format to another. This practice is not only time consuming but frequently error prone resulting in an inefficient use of engineering time.

As of today, the “classical” V diagram is very well known among more and more engineers. Nonetheless its usage – even partly – is far away from the potential that it offers. One reason might be, that its benefits are not really obvious for the end-users. With this presentation, we will bring a new view by “closing the old V” and transferring it to a “closed ∇ (Nabla) cycle”. The focus of this contribution is on the opportunities to significantly increase the effectiveness of the approach of model-based development (MBD) by re-using engineering efforts in multiple ways.

Reducing aircraft design and development time is critical for all aircraft manufacturers, from urban air mobility and electric aircraft startups to military to commercial OEMs. In order to fully understand and optimize the complex systems of systems required in modern aircraft, aerospace engineers leverage a simulation method called Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE). MBSE allows the evaluation of various types of vehicle systems to determine which best meet the mission requirements.

The analysis of a design, especially for a more complex product, system, or component, often requires building multiple simulation models.

In this article, appearing in the Fall 2020 issue of Engine + Powertrain Technology International, Altair outlines how a holistic approach to propulsion system design is enabling manufacturers to meet performance requirements while maximizing vehicle range.

Block construction is a modern shipbuilding method which involves the assembly of prefabricated modular sections. Cross-sections of the superstructure are pre-built in a shipyard, taken to the building dock, then hoisted into position and attached. Block splitting and lifting schemes are largely devised after the ship design phase is completed, relying on empirical data and expertise to avoid costly and potentially dangerous failures during build-up. Advances in computer-aided engineering (CAE), however, now make it possible to plan ship build-up in the principal design phase, giving designers greater insights into block assembly process outcomes and reducing downstream risk through simulation.

Transformers’ windings experience mechanical loads from electromagnetic forces due to the currents they carry. Power transformers can suffer from high sudden short-circuit currents. These short-circuit currents are a significant threat, not only from an electrical but also from the structural integrity point of view. In this paper, coupled electromagnetic and structural mechanics simulations are carried out to evaluate short-circuit fault risks in a comprehensive and accurate way.

The Additive Manufacturing for Production survey conducted by TCT Magazine in association with Altair set out to understand the community’s desire and readiness for the much-promised land of series production using additive technologies. This collaboration between TCT and Altair was designed to understand the needs of the community in terms of current production capabilities, rate-limiting steps and areas of the technology that they believe needs improvement.

Simulation helps you validate at the end of a product design cycle, but deployed early and throughout a development process, it can actually allow you to explore more potential solutions, collaborate more effectively and optimize the design for cost, performance, weight, and other important criteria. This infographic provides a framework for developing and implementing your own simulation-driven process to help you produce more efficient e-motors and shorten development times. 

This paper presents a case study of a ship foundation optimized for DDAM early in the design phase to validate and optimize the structural integrity of a ship foundation subject to underwater shock conditions.

High accuracy sensors and encoders are integral components of an e-motor drive, greatly impacting the quality and efficiency on the system. A purpose-driven simulation approach is needed to account for all the physical interdependencies within these complex multi-domain systems.

Engineering.com audience survey of nonlinear simulation practices

This article, featured in the October 2019 issue of NAFEMS BENCHMARK Magazine, chronicles the origins and legacy of OptiStruct, an early pioneer of simulation-driven design. Features quotes from Altair CEO Jim Scapa and other influential voices from the early days of Altair's history. Article originally published in Benchmark Magazine by NAFEMS, the International Association for the Engineering Modeling, Analysis & Simulation Community. Find out more at nafems.org.

Cost optimization is a driving force in all fields of industry, with every manufacturer competing to provide a cost-effective solution to the end customer. The paper addresses how to perform an early-stage design of components with emphasis on cost optimization and without consuming too much of a construction designer's precious time. The main objective of this paper is to generate a proposal for a car seat design, based on free size optimization and cost optimization using Altair OptiStruct commercial engineering software.

Topology optimization is an approach that optimizes the material distribution within a given design space, for a given set of loads and boundary conditions, to meet a set of performance targets. Using topology optimization at a concept level can help you achieve the best performing design while saving time by replacing costly design iterations.

Induction Motors (IM) are widely used in various industries. To ensure their speed control, IM will be supplied with pulse width modulation (PWM). This kind of supply, can impact efficiency of the motor and degrade its vibro-acoustic behavior, generating noise nuisance. To tackle these technical challenges and ensure best-in class acoustic comfort for users, it is necessary to design a quiet e-motors at the early stage of design. The first aim of this paper is to show a new method to reduce noise and vibration due to PWM supply of induction machine. The proposed approach allows the passive reduction of air-gap flux density harmonics in an induction machine. The second interest, is to show a new method to analyze the vibro-acoustic behavior of a PWM-fed IM. The method is fully finite element (FE) computation. Finally, the third interest of this article, is to compare noise and vibration results between the proposed FE method, magneto-vibro-acoustic coupling and measurements. Good agreement between measurements and computation will be shown.

This special report by engineering.com covers two of the most talked-about trends in the product design community today: Generative Design and Topology Optimization. These simulation techniques allow customers to design lightweight and performative parts using a simulation-driven design approach.

A simulation-driven design process is proven to generate improved, more robust and cost-effective designs within a shorter design cycle. Incorporating simulation and optimization early in the design cycle helps shape the concept designs so less iterations and rework is necessary as the design matures. This paper is intended to discuss the initial steps that can be taken when using a simulation-driven design approach to design and engineer products. Several of Altair’s design and engineering tools will be coupled to achieve various design goals.

Today, most products are complex mechatronic combinations of advanced technologies, mixing electrical parts with controllers and embedded software. To efficiently manage innovative products, organizations are turning to a Model-Based Development approach for concept studies, control design, multi-domain system simulation and optimization. To meet this demand, Altair’s simulation and optimization suite aims to transform design and decision-making throughout product lifecycles with their multi-disciplinary software tools and consultancy services.

Many commercial aircraft are designed so that fuselage skins can elastically buckle below limit load and continue to operate safely and efficiently. This design regime makes for a very lightweight semi-monocoque structure compared to a non-buckling design. Therefore, predicting the local buckling, post-buckling behavior, and failures are critical to design and optimization of this kind of structure. The local panels buckle in a combination of compression and shear. Excess compression is redistributed to surrounding axial members (frames and stringers) and shear is continued to be carried by the buckled panels via tension parallel to the buckle waves. The compression redistribution and diagonal tension put special strength considerations on all involved structural components. This post-buckling behavior and the analysis method are both called intermediate diagonal tension (IDT).

Target hardware support for Altair Embed™: TI: F28x, MSP430, ARM Cortex M3 Arduino: Atmel ST Micro: STM32F3

Using Altair Feko, ALCIOM examined two prototypes manufactured using 3D-printing technology to demonstrate the performance of 3D-printed plastic waveguide components at V-band frequencies. Article originally appeared in Microwaves&RF (www.mwrf.com) on January 4, 2019

Optimization software enables naval architecture and engineering firm to design a next-generation superyacht anchor arm that is less than half the assembled weight of its predecessor.

A company specializing in 3D printing relies on simulation to make tools for injection molding that are less expensive, lighter and better than those created with traditional methods.

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology has the potential to significantly enhance driver safety. The type, placement, and orientation of V2V antennas all affect the performance of the communication system. Simulation software for high frequency electromagnetics can be used to analyze the farfield effects of various vehicle antenna configurations without the need to perform physical testing. We present a simulation-based method for optimizing the placement and orientation of a monopole antenna on a vehicle using a Global Response Surface Method (GRSM).

In recent times there is a high demand for lightweight automotive components which will reduce oil consumption and emissions. The components that are under non-linear load conditions would need optimization techniques that would yield a design which satisfies all performance targets and at the same time maintains the process efficiency with respect to time and cost. The use of CAE tools such as Altair’s OptiStruct and HyperWorks allows engineers to explore various design solutions starting from concept level to matured design that meets multiple requirements simultaneously with due consideration of manufacturing methods that allows engineers to arrive at an optimal design and process.

This paper gives a technical review and guidelines for positioning the current capabilities. Note that the following uses OptiStruct version v2018. There have been some changes to the discussed algorithms compared to previous versions. Generally, version 2017.2.3 can be used to reproduce all the presented results.