Improving Perceived Quality at CEVT - New Body Evaluation Method Enables Squeak & Rattle Prevention

An engineer working for Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation Marine Systems (NGSC-MS) was given a project to improve their teams’ current NASTRAN results post-processing workflow by writing a script to automate the task. They reached out to Altair for collaboration and Altair engineers were able to quickly determine that Altair’s mathematical modeling environment – “Altair Compose” – would be the ideal solution due to its ability to read, manipulate, and write NASTRAN results. Also, the Open Matrix Language is a scripting language that is familiar to the engineering community. Given sample NASTRAN results and requirements Altair engineers provided a “template” script. The NGSC-MS team was able to quickly understand and modify the script to their goals. The custom results were then viewable in HyperView as a contour plot, which saved a considerable amount of time during post-processing and documentation workflows.

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. Lenord + Bauer worked with Altair to develop a system simulation process for their high-accuracy encoders to understand their impact on the quality and efficiency of the system.

At the end of 2015, the XPRIZE foundation launched the Shell Ocean Discovery competition, a three-year global challenge to advance deep-sea exploration using autonomous subsea drones. Teams competed to develop underwater robots that could fully map 500 km2 of seafloor at a 4 km depth in less than 24 hours with no human intervention. One of the competing teams was TEAMTAO, a collaboration of Newcastle University, SMD (Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd), and UK Research and Innovation. Altair joined the project as a technical design partner and provided the team with simulation expertise to virtually simulate, optimize, and test the devices. Altair simulation specialists followed a simulation-driven design approach in order to save on development time and physical prototyping.

For a recent project, Altran, a leading global engineering consultant company, designed a fluidic circuit for a hemodialysis system. One of the main requirements for hemodialysis is to keep the temperature of the dialysis solution stable while it is flowing through the device. To achieve this, they investigated different layouts and optimal parameters for the fluidic system to minimize heat loss. Since the Finite Element model comprised of more than 7 million elements, they decided to explore different, more rapid simulation strategies for the design exploration stage. Reduced Order Models (ROM) were created using Altair Activate® and Compose® and were validated through comparison with existing CFD models. The use of ROMs, with 30x shorter simulation time, was not just ideal for quick optimization of the system, but also allowed Altran Engineers to challenge, and significantly alter the existing design of the circuit by increasing the number of considered layouts by 1000% (from 5 to 55).

FIAT chose Altair ProductDesign as a partner to perform a pilot project to investigate squeak and rattle. The project focused on studying issues on the FIAT UNO, a vehicle made exclusively for the South American market. Altair ProductDesign suggested that FIAT implement Altair’s ‘Squeak and Rattle Director’ (SNRD), a comprehensive set of services and software automations that rapidly identify and analyze design alternatives to eliminate the root causes of squeak and rattle in assemblies. With customization from the Altair ProductDesign team, the solution provides a semi-automated approach to determine relative component displacements in the time domain that can lead to undesired noise. A dedicated four day workshop facilitated a fast ramp-up of the NVH team’s knowledge of the SNRD and helped Altair to identify FIAT’s specific design process that the solution could be tailored to.

In 2019, engineers at Schneider Electric’s R&D center in Mexico took on a project to study the dynamic performance of a microgenerator designed to power a wireless communication card for lighting switches by self-harvesting energy. However, to achieve a successful design, particular consideration needed to be given to operating temperature specifications. Differing operating conditions had to be explored to determine the energy performance of the generator. A fully integrated, multi-physics toolkit was achieved by complementing Altair Flux with Altair Activate™, Altair Compose™, and Altair HyperStudy™. The flexibility and capability of these tools had a dramatic effect not only on the performance outcome, but also the speed with which results were obtained. Moreover, robust risk management was assured, with effective simulation and optimization preventing engineers from heading in the wrong direction, or building prototypes that did not meet the desired objectives.