Driving Aerospace Competitiveness - INESPASA Accelerates Design of Aero Tooling Structures Using Altair SimSolid®

Urwahn Engineering GmbH is a startup in the biking sector. While bikes must meet many requirements to pass globally recognized test and load case scenarios according to DIN ISO 4210 safety standards, they must also be light to reduce raw material usage and create the best possible user experience. For this aim, simulation has always played a key role at Urwahn, a team that strives to maximize functionality and performance by using state-of-the-art tools. Under the Altair Startup program, Urwahn received access to Altair® Inspire™. To meet the DIN ISO 4210’s safety requirements, they simulated five load cases on the steel frame structure, studied the behavior of the single 3D-printed parts, and explored the impact of the material distribution on the overall system behavior. Inspire’s integrated topology optimization solver enabled Urwahn to push the material usage limit, reducing weight and costs while keeping stiffness and other boundary conditions on target.

The demand for biomass briquetting is steadily increasing since the use of brown coal fuel will be dramatically reduced to meet CO2 emission targets in the near future. Many big plants across Europe will stop producing brown coal briquettes by the end of 2022. To address this trend and growing demand for alternative fuel options, ATNA set out to develop a new generation of briquetting presses. ATNA’s goal was to design an improved hydraulic press which can achieve the high throughput of a roller press while delivering a high briquette quality. ATNA implemented Altair SimSolid® under the global Altair Startup program, tailored to the needs of high-tech startups offering access to all types of simulation, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence solutions at an affordable price. With Altair SimSolid’s meshless simulation ATNA was efficiently able to study many variants thanks to the reduced modeling time and incredible computational speed of SimSolid. With SimSolid ATNA needed 60% less time to customize, simulated 80% more subassemblies and used 15% less material.

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are a rapidly evolving technology and used for a variety of civil and military purposes. To ensure airworthiness, UAS manufacturers rely on advanced simulation and manufacturing techniques to create efficient designs. Aerial systems active throughout Europe and operating with diverse payloads for different missions require a reliable vehicle architecture and fuel supply. To ensure perfectly tuned architecture and a lightweight design while increasing stiffness and strength, Schiebel used Altair solutions in combination with 3D printing. The engineers performed various simulations to optimize the design of AM engine parts. Using Altair’s topology optimization structural design tool, Schiebel reduced the weight significantly while maintaining high stiffness. Subsequently, the system was evaluated by laminar and turbulent flow simulation as well as conjugate heat transfer simulation using Altair CFD™. Contacts, NLFE and complex dynamic systems were modeled with Altair® MotionView® and Altair® MotionSolve®. Schiebel also took advantage of APA solutions.

Noise reduction is an important issue when developing products and components for railway applications. Recently, Ultimate Europe had to perform an acoustic analysis of a rail carriage bellow. In addition to its own broad portfolio of simulation solutions, Altair offers a wide selection of complementary software tools through the Altair Partner Alliance (APA). With Altair’s unique, flexible licensing model customers have access to these solutions at no additional costs. Altair Units allowed Ultimate to leverage APA products and access the functionalities of AlphaCell to predict the acoustic response of the bellow. Results included reduced run time, a decrease in model set up time, and increased combined metric correlation.

As the traditional optimization process at Renault required many iterations, simulation engineer involvement, and a considerable amount of time, the company was looking for tools and methods to improve this process. They wanted to implement a new, easy-to-use simulation tool that would allow non-experts, part-time analysts, and designers to gain insight and accurate results in early design phases of Renault chassis projects. With the goal to enable designers to run simulation by themselves without being dependent on the engineer’s calculations, the team began using Altair Inspire. The implementation on the Altair HPC platform enabled the engineers to send their highly complex calculations to the HPC server while running calculations on their workstation. The results included time savings, an 80% increase in process automation and mass reduction up to 20%.

Etteplan offers engineering solutions to the world’s leading manufacturing companies for industrial equipment and plant engineering. Etteplan’s client Wärtsilä were looking to redesign their valve spring press tools used for mounting cylinder head valves. Altair OptiStruct™ and Altair Inspire™ were used to run topology optimization and finite element analyses to create design concepts, and Additive Works’ Amphyon software simulated the print process. This resulted in Etteplan’s additive manufacturing press tool design being ready to be printed within one week from when the project starting data was frozen.

MOTO-MAQLAB-UC3M was founded in 2010 by students at Carlos III University in Madrid, Spain, to develop a racing motorcycle for the international MotoStudent competition. MotoStudent is an international event held every two years at the MotorLand, Aragon circuit and welcomes university teams from all over the world. The MOTO-MAQLAB-UC3M team won awards in several categories of the fourth MotoStudent edition. Inspired by their successful participation, the students wanted to further develop and improve their race bike designs to repeat or exceed these results. In order to improve their results, the MOTO-MAQLAB-UC3M team needed to reduce the mass in the cycle parts of the bike. Altair solutions enabled the MOTO-MAQLAB-UC3M team to approximate the ideal number of layers, their shape, order, and direction. Mass reduction of 30% was achieved while maintaining the original stiffness.

There has been an increasing need for GM design teams to develop their technical abilities to perform structural analysis and be able to evaluate their own designs. The simulation (Altair competitor) software initially utilized by designers proved problematic, and GM was keen to investigate a new approach. Altair SimSolid provided them with an alternative which not only dramatically decreased preprocessing time, it also allowed designers to evaluate complex components and complete ensembles which was not possible with the previously used software. For modal analysis at the component level, a correlation factor of 97% was found with SimSolid, compared to the center’s existing solver. With SimSolid, this was combined with a 75% reduction in time taken to complete the analysis. Of that saving, 81% is accounted for by pre-processing, the rest for generating the solution.

Würth Industrie Service GmbH & Co. KG (WIS) is an independent subsidiary of the Würth Group, providing integrated logistics solutions for automated, efficient supply of production materials as well as auxiliary and operating materials. The company offers individually tailored, logistical supply and service concepts such as scanner-supported rack systems and automated electronic ordering systems. In line with the company’s ultimate goals including innovation, cost reduction, and process optimization, WIS wanted to explore how simulation can be used to improve its products. As achieving a lightweight design was one of its main goals, the company started a collaboration project with Altair to perform topology optimizations on components of its KUKA robots. The project resulted in weight savings of 87%, leading to a reduction of repair costs by 94% and for used LED strips by 50%.

As a market leader in small-scale passenger transportation, the Tribus Group develops products for wheelchair-accessible passenger transportation ranging from foldable, ergonomic seats and easy-to-install wheelchair lifts to electric minibuses and low-floor buses. A recent innovation is its awarded Movitas electric city bus – an energy efficient, modular, and 100% electric city bus for public transportation and deliveries. Tribus engineers were asked to optimize the entire bus within an existing design and dimensions to minimize energy consumption and extend driving range. Working with SimSolid greatly accelerated the process, with results that far exceeded their set targets. The optimization of the Movitas bus resulted in a total weight reduction of 1,900 kilograms, making it both more energy-efficient and comfortable.

Payload is a key performance measure for military vehicles, determining how many personnel and/or goods can be carried. Reflecting this, the US Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC) is engaged in a project to reduce the curb weight of vehicles, and thereby boost payloads, by redesigning and replacing existing components with lighter alternatives. Specifically, GVSC is combining topology optimization with additive manufacturing to realize significant weight savings, without compromising other critical requirements. Altair was contracted for external expertise to create new component designs. The results included achievement of 67% mass reduction for an alternator bracket, and cheaper costs than the current machined baseline.

In modern passenger transport systems, flawless operation, comfort, and safety are key engineering criteria for design. To guarantee these key performance indicators, demanding fatigue tests are performed to ensure a component’s performance and strength. Advanced simulation methods can help to achieve an optimal design and ensure that components meet even the highest safety requirements. Using Altair Inspire, Doppelmayr, a manufacturer of ropeways and innovative transportation systems for ski areas and urban areas, built a design that passed the safety test, and optimized the gondola station to be lighter, safer, and more durable than requested. More recently, Doppelmayr also started using Altair SimSolid™ to explore its designs and create structural efficient concepts for large models and complex assemblies.

Truck dynamics, control system, thermal, and fatigue analyses all need to be completed when designing a new truck design. Using Altair HyperWorks, Hitachi achieves a 10% weight reduction in the main frame and rigid body, while maintaining product quality.

When planning offices and foyers to showcase the hallmark values of their customers, many architects benefit from the open and inviting atmosphere of glass structures. Faraone, designer and manufacturer of such lightweight structures, used Altair solutions to analyze and redesign support structures for large-scale glass elements, which are the core business of the company. The results are topologically optimized and stiffer aluminum channels that can host the structural glass element. With cost reduction, shorter development times, and design efficiency, this use case from Faraone demonstrates the benefits of simulation technologies in accelerating product development.

BOTT stands for “Battle of the Twins,” a racing category for motorbikes with two-cylinder four stroke engines. Bottpower is a Spanish motorsport engineering company located in Valencia. They specialize in designing and building custom motorbikes for racing and street use. They design and build parts, systems, and prototypes for other companies. A project challenge at Bottpower was to design a lightweight stay bracket for their motorbike that could withstand the main and aerodynamic loads. The goal was finding the optimal weight and stiffness ratio to reduce weight while ensuring safety measures. All of this had to be done quickly in order to arrive on time at Addit3D, Spain's most important 3D-print fair, to showcase the bike. The optimal design for aerodynamic loads was found using Altair software.

Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance is a French-Japanese strategic partnership between the automobile manufacturers Renault (based in France), Nissan (based in Japan) and Mitsubishi Motors (based in Japan). Today, the automotive group has 122 manufacturing plants worldwide with nearly 450,000 employees controlling ten major brands: Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Infiniti, Renault Samsung, Dacia, Alpine, Datsun, Venucia, and Lada. The ambition of the alliance is to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features, and services on a wide range of affordable vehicles. As part of the Renault Chassis Le Mans plant, which is building car-to-ground connecting components for the Renault Group and for the Alliance, the CTC Chassis Technical Center is a CAD engineering center where 350 engineers and technicians are working with a focus on testing and validation. Renault has been using SimSolid to perform simulations to develop lighter chassis faster.

New airborne solutions are being developed to accommodate one or more persons for air travel. Explorations including large drones, small helicopters, airplanes, and flying cars will enable companies to respond to the demand for Personal Air Mobility (PAM). The team at Talaria was founded by students at the Delft University of Technology. The idea for Talaria’s Individual Air Mobility project began at the end of 2017. Founder Philipp Essle heard about the Boeing GoFly competition which rewarded the best designs for a one-person aircraft. Talaria’s mission is to develop an electrically driven PAM that can take-off and land vertically in urban environments. Talaria is using Altair Inspire to check whether material and weight could be reduced through topology optimization. This approach resulted in a significant 1.5-kilogram weight reduction of the rotor hubs.

Developing new factory lines and assembly machines is a very challenging task. These systems are incredibly complex and contain many different components and subsystems. Vierhout Engineering improved their structural steel machine framing using Altair's mesh-free simulation tools.

Using Altair simulation software, Gurit supports Western Sydney University's Bridgestone World Solar Challenge team, helping them design the most efficient and aerodynamic car possible, while ensuring driver safety and adhering to class rules.

Canadian start-up company Philomec specializes in mechanical engineering services that helps companies design and optimize their products using mechanical and biomechanical FEM simulation. Their creation of customized, validated biomechanical models, and the analysis of simulation results by experts allows surgeons to choose the model of an implant and adapt surgical maneuvers to a specific patient, thus reducing the number of implants used, as well as the risk of complications. It is challenging to validate biomechanical models due to the complexity of materials, scarcity of experimental data, and the lack of representation of variability. The application of Altair HyperWorks for explicit multiphysics simulation provides a high-level of confidence in the validity and stability of the musculoskeletal models.

To build a very simple, robust, sustainable roof structure for a prosthesis lab associated with the Centre medico-chirurgical de l'Ulcère de Buruli, which is a hospital in Bouaké, on the Ivory Coast of Africa, the project team used Altair SimSolid, to conduct very fast, full assembly tests, saving time and money, while providing increased flexibility, without compromising accuracy.

The South African aviation manufacturing solutions provider Aerosud and the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) teamed up to launch a challenging 3D printing project, Aeroswift. Aeroswift collaborated with Altair to develop a methodology for designing large additively manufactured products. An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) frame was designed as a demonstration and subsequently printed on Aeroswift. To improve manufacturability while meeting all component requirements, the project engineers used Altair Inspire™ and its topology optimization capabilities in the design process.

An Altair customer for many years, Schneider Electric at first used only Altair Flux; now the company has extended their usage to several more software products in the Altair HyperWorks suite, including solutions such as Activate, MotionSolve, OptiStruct, and others to apply co-simulation in their development processes. Schneider feels their collaboration with Altair is more like a partnership than the standard supplier-OEM relationship.

Serapid, the developer and manufacturer of the original Rigid Chain, designs and manufactures telescopic mechanical actuators for the horizontal and vertical movement of heavy loads. See how they use Altair SimSolid™ to aid in gravity loads of complete structure simulation.

See how McFarlane Hand and Upper Limb Centre in London, Ontario is uses Altair SimSolid™ to evaluate the biomechanics of bone stresses.

Andron Handling needed to assess the strength of the welded fabrication and vertical clamping arms for both lifting and clamping loads. In previous analysis of this type in Altair SimSolid™, they would have removed the wheels from the model and applied reaction forces at the bottom of each of the clamp arms. In this case, Andron used a different approach that would not have been possible with previous FEA toolsets.

The National Composites Centre (NCC), in collaboration with the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and University of Warwick (WMG) worked on a collaborative project to develop a Cross-Catapult technology demonstrator; the Mono-Ski or Sit-ski, a device for sports that uses adaptive equipment on mountain slopes, designed for individuals with lower extremity limitations. Composites were used extensively in the new Sit-ski design with the Altair HyperWorks™ suite being utilized throughout the development process.

Mabe is a Mexico-based international appliance company designing, producing and distributing a wide spectrum of home appliances such as washing machines, dryers, cooking ranges, refrigerators, air-conditioners, microwaves, etc. Altair technology has enabled Mabe to increase the capacity of their washing machines by 35%, and the spin speed by 24% while reducing the cost per cubic foot by 10%.

As part of educational programs for students to acquire practical skills and knowledge, Aichi University Technology (AUT) participated in a demonstration test competition aiming for future Mars exploration. A Rocket Launch for International Student Satellites (ARLISS), is a competitive event for the evaluation of autonomous robots – conducting tests relating to their autonomous descent back to the ground after being launched 400m above the ground using a small rocket. For the final designed robot, HyperWorks was used for structural analysis to understand whether or not the robot meets requirements, and MotionSolve was extremely useful for practical industrial education that is linked to CAD design.

Cyclone Racing utilized topology optimization and generative design to decrease the mass of its FSAE vehicle by generating a new design concept for its wing mount achieving 67% weight reduction of the bracket.

Automotive suppliers are facing many challenges in having in-house simulation capabilities compared to that of OEM’s. One of the ways to overcome these challenges is to invest in simulation technologies that require an affordable initial investment, the ownership cost of which is low, the codes are reliable & proven, and the suite of tools provide suppliers access to a broad range of solvers (a true multi-physics environment) helping them pick and choose the solvers as per their simulation requirements. In the early stage of in-house simulation implementation at Endurance Technologies, HyperWorks was being adopted primarily for pre and post processing due to its extraordinary FE modeling solutions. With constant support, Altair team has helped Endurance in exploring and implementing various HyperWorks solvers at Endurance Technologies.

IAI and SpaceIL utilized topology optimization with 3D modeling and rendering to design a 3D Printed thruster bracket to be used on its Google Lunar XPRIZE craft for its trip to the moon.

A university team at MIT, Pune used topology optimization and additive manufacturing to develop two new designs for the Quad-rotor UAV drone that were lighter and stronger than previous designs.  

Subros is the leading manufacturer of thermal products for automotive applications in India and operates in technical collaboration with Denso. Being a major supplier of AC units to the predominant automotive segments and all classes of vehicles produced by global players in the country, it is very important for Subros to honor deadlines of product delivery with agreed benchmarks of quality. The Subros team has used Altair solutions such HyperMesh for FE modeling, RADIOSS and OptiStruct for structural analysis, AcuSolve for flow analysis, and solidThinking Inspire for Modal Analysis

Amazone develops and produces innovative agricultural technology, enabling and supporting modern and economical arable farming methods. For the re-design of an originally welded suspension component as a casting part, solidThinking Inspire was used for topology optimization. The benefits included increased durability by a factor of 2.5 and an 8% reduction in weight.

Ryerson's International Hyperloop Team utilized finite element analysis and topology optimization to redesign a metal additive manufactured motor bracket. PolyNURBS was used to make the design 3D print-friendly.

Ankers performed co-simulation using a combined multibody and brake systems model in MotionView and Activate to generate more accurate results to analyze thermal and other effects on braking.

Faraone accelerates the design approach for lighter and stiffer architectural components with premium topology optimization technology.

Alstom coupled topology optimization with additive manufacturing to explore the feasibility of alternate manufacturing to traditional casting. This resulted in a 70% weight reduction of its locomotive component.

LEIBER Group, which specializes in developing lightweight metal components, applied topology optimization to determine the ideal shape for a vehicle suspension beam, resulting in mass savings of over 50%