Increasing Productivity for CFD Model Build

On an international stage, confidence in your design is the bridge to success. Engineering principles have been cultivated to satisfy design requirements and help analyze more and more accurately. For Team Albatross, as analysis of aircraft design holds crucial, Altair strikes to be the first choice. This integrated system houses major products such as Simlab, SImSolid, and Hypermesh which have helped us introduce new design validation analyses for the team. With Altair, we achieved greater computational power even on the simplest of laptop configurations. Altair Hypermesh has allowed dealing with complex geometries that come with our design with utmost ease, giving precise results. Powerful products of Altair such as SimSolid help us perform a plethora of analyses in a short span of time and completely eliminate the barrier of computing limitations. Such unique analysis tools of Altair have enabled Team Albatross to secure ranks in the top 3 for the past 2 years on an international level, and this year, Team Albatross also stood 1st nationwide. Seeing this, it is certain that with what Altair has to offer, Team Albatross is more than ready to advance in technological standards and bring laurels this year too!

The usability of a headset is largely determined by a comfortable fit and its resistance to everyday use. Learn from Alice Lin, Manager of Mechanics at GN Audio R&D how she introduced FEM simulation capabilities at Jabra. The presentation shows how product design benefits from structural analysis, design for comfort, and drop test simulation. A future extension of simulation capabilities intends to address more areas and improve the simulation-driven design process efficiency. Speaker: Alice Lin, Manager of Mechanics, GN Audio Duration: 22 minutes Click the AD icon to select alternative audio translations - French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.

AAM has been providing mechanical drivelines to automotive customers for more than 25 years. As the automobile transitions to electrification, so too must the driveline. AAM has developed a suite of innovative, lightweight, compact and cost-optimized electric drive units and electric beam axles to meet the growing global technology demand as electric vehicles continue to expand over the next decade. Engineering simulation, optimization and validation tools were significant enablers to increase the validation confidence and reduce the time to market for these new products.

Sustainable designs last longer. David Yáñez from Vortex Bladeless, a Spanish start-up, shares his vision of the technology, the strategies used for the integration of the different physical phenomena involved in the simulation-driven design, and the development of their resonating structures having minimal parts susceptible to wear by friction. The simulation results from CFD, with fluid-structure interaction, and electromagnetic field simulation are compared with experimental wind tunnel results and from in-service environments.

Gaining insights into a product’s performances has never been easier. With the HyperWorks Design Explorer, users can easily set up and execute the design of experiments (DOE) and optimization studies, learning which attributes contribute the most to the different performances, review, plot, and compare results from multiple runs, and ultimately identify optimal designs. The quick and easy setup process is solver independent, yet fully integrated with Altair’s structural analysis solutions. On the other hand, many design specifications are quantifiable and can be confirmed by physics but optimizing a design for subjective design requirements such as the look and feel of a product requires a different approach. This is when expertAI can help. It uses machine learning to enable you to include criteria that have traditionally been considered purely subjective or expert-driven in design optimization. The AI algorithms cluster your designs with respect to their subjective behaviors allowing them to be labeled to train a model aligned with your preferences.

What if you could create 1D simulation models that retain the precision of your 3D analysis while running up to thousands of times faster?

With lightweighting at the forefront of the sustainability discussion, Altair HyperWorks has introduced a targeted environment to rapidly create models for topology optimization. The complete HyperWorks Design Space environment includes an automotive-only non-design space library, collision detection, and a fast and efficient voxel Boolean mesh engine. It facilitates the creation of new model variants in seconds without the need to go back to CAD. In addition to automotive BIW architecture studies, it supports design space local and global modeling for generic sub-systems throughout different industries. The concept adhesive workflow is also available to identify location of structural adhesive.

Nowadays, many Machine Learning techniques able to identify dynamic models from data are taking hold. But, can we support the learning phase leveraging our expertise obtaining models with better generalization property? To tackle this need and others we have developed a novel approach, romAI. This application combines AI and system modeling techniques to generate reusable continuous dynamic models extremely time-efficient, hence used as Reduced-Order Models to speed-up system design and optimization or in Digital Twins/Simulators for real-time applications.

In this session, we showcase the build and assembly of a full system model. Driven by Parts, Subsystems, and Connectors, the Altair HyperWorks™ model build and assembly workflow facilitates representation, revision, and configuration management for subsystem and system-level model building. We also demonstrate Altair’s AI-driven workflow to automatically group identical or similar parts.

In this session, we will showcase HyperWorks’ brand-new sketching tools, and some of the latest developments around geometry handling and mesh generation techniques, including midmeshing, mesh controls, tetra, and hexa meshing. We also show examples of using morphing to reshape parts for design, optimization, or assembly purposes.

In this session we will highlight how Altair HyperWorks supports efficient data processing and visualization, thereby helping users to make decisions faster. From the simulation-driven design workflow, fully integrated with HyperWorks’ model build functionalities, to the high-performance visualization and reporting of simulation results, HyperWorks provides the best framework to visualize, process, and report data

Altair products are quickly evolving into AI-driven products. Starting from the modeling and visualization products, the latest release of Altair HyperWorks includes features like shapeAI, which quickly finds and classifies parts “by shape” inside geometry files or finite element meshes - when you want to locate all of the bolts, shafts, and gears in a complex assembly - by applying machine learning.

What makes artificial intelligence a game changer is not what movies depict with the loud destructive powers of artificially intelligent robots. It’s the opposite, it is the silent creative destruction that it brings as apps in our phones or features in the tools that we use such as spam filters, fraud detectors, and recommendation engines. When combined, these tools make our lives more enjoyable, safe, and productive. In a similar spirit, at Altair, we have been working on powering product design and development with AI to make your work lives more enjoyable, and productive. Our focus has been improving processes and outcomes by reducing repetitive, labor-intensive, non-value-added tasks as well as emulating experts and enriching performance predictions with real-time field predictions. What makes these offerings unique is their no-code integration to the tools that you are already familiar with and hence not requiring you to have to leave your own working environment. In this presentation, examples of such AI-Powered product design processes will be demonstrated. The presentation by Dr. Fatma Kocer, VP of Engineering Data Science at Altair, aired at Future.AI in June 2021, and is almost 30 minutes long. Ready to see how your company can drive innovation with AI-powered design? Contact our solutions experts today. View all Future.AI 2021 Presentations

TransAnt GmbH is an Austrian joint venture by ÖBB Rail Cargo Group and voestalpine Stahl GmbH with the aim to bring more efficient and effective transport alternatives on to the market and thus making rail freight transport more attractive and sustainable.

In this presentation the company talks about the development of their freight wagon “TransANT” - a revolutionary platform concept that reacts to the changing needs of their customers. Its 20% lighter underframe creates a payload advantage of up to 4 tonnes per wagon. Industry-specific wagon bodies and straightforward swapping make for ideal logistics solutions - adaptable to every type of logistical requirements. Using Altair software, the company is currently making TransANT assemblies ready for serial production.

Presented at the ATCx Heavy Equipment in May 2021.

Speakers: Anja Schmid, Key Account Manager & Andreas Tomschi, Development Engineer, TransAnt

Duration: 20 minutes

In order to ensure the safety of passengers and on-board personnel, finite element calculation is used at SNCF as part of the acquisition, renovation / modernization projects of trains as a decision aid and preparation for testing approval of trains. This is the main case of the mechanical strength of bolted and screwed assemblies, and more and more of the integration of composite materials into rolling stock structures in order to make them more capacious and less energy intensive. To do this, SNCF is developing methodologies to make the modeling of bolted assemblies and composite parts more reliable, as well as topology optimization. The tools of the HyperWorks suite, and in particular, the OptiStruct solver, allow SNCF to represent its types of materials, as well as these phenomena (bolted assemblies + topology optimization).

Presented at the ATCx Heavy Equipment in May 2021.

Speakers: Patrick Jumin, Derik Joël Kengne Tapchom & Karim Slimani, SNCF

Duration: 20 minutes

Dr. Fatma Kocer VP, Engineering Data Science at Altair showcases the impact of AI in development environments. In particular on how CAE tools will evolve and Design Exploration is taken to the next level.

Brett Chouinard, President and COO of Altair discusses Development challenges in Industrial machinery and illustrates how Altair's scalable simulation solutions provide the environment for simulation-driven innovation and how machine learning expands the capabilities furter.

Simon Zwingert, Technical Consultant, gives a Demo Sessions on Altair Simulation Solutions for faster evaluation of real-world machines, explaining how, to improve the design with studies and the design exploration on the complete assembly to perform weld line optimization.

Daniel Jauss, Application Engineer CAE, gives a Demo Sessions on Altair Simulation Solutions for faster evaluation of real-world machines, explaining how to realize vibration reduction with topology optimization performing a modal analysis & Optimization of a machine portal, identifies economic manufacturing alternatives, and conducts a topology optimization for sheet metal constructions.

Indradev Babu, Managing Director, UCAM PVT LTD, explains how he developed a CNC Jobshop to the largest manufacturer of CNC Rotary tables—presenting different development examples, he explains how Simulation Driven Design helps him to differentiate and what simulation Strategies he implements in the customer-centric development for the following generation Machine Tools at UCAM.

Martin Kemp, Regional Manager at Altair, Dr. Denis Cumming, a Senior Lecturer at The University of Sheffield, John Milios, CEO at Sendyne, Dr. Gregory Offer, Reader at Imperial College London and finally Professor Jun Xu, Director of Vehicle Energy & Safety Laboratory at The University of North Carolina, present - Developing Predictive Electro Thermal Cell Models for Pack Level Deployment. This presentation will focus on the simulation of the battery cell to represent its complex thermal and mechanical behaviour. The thermal behaviour requires the simulation of the electric behaviour within the cell which leads to the generation of heat. Managing the thermal behaviour is fundamental to the long term health of the battery. The talk provides an overview of the technologies used to simulate battery behaviour, commencing with the understanding of the battery structure including the simulation of electrode manufacture. Both electrochemical and equivalent circuit models will be discussed with the advantages and disadvantages of both methods presented. Finally, machine learning technology is used to create an intelligent cell model which retains accuracy whilst delivering computational efficiency which can be used in Part 2.

Altair CTO James Dagg presents an overview of the journey Altair took to develop the leading modeling and visualization technologies we have today, and provides a look at what’s coming next to help you reduce your product delivery time. James Dagg has been at Altair for more than 30 years and is a visionary behind Altair’s software strategy and development activities. He has also led the development of Altair’s concept design technologies and oversaw the development of Altair’s CAE software suite for more than a decade.

In his presentation, Dr. Darren Ashby, CAE Group Leader at Jaguar Land Rover discusses some of the technological developments that have led to reduced meshing time and enhanced model quality at Jaguar Land Rover. Additionally he shares some thoughts on the direction of finite elements modelling, future functionalities, and new technologies which will enable further productivity gains at the company. Dr. Darren Ashby, CAE Group Leader at Jaguar Land Rover has been at the company for over 30 years, having joined as a technical apprentice and progressing to where he is now as the CAE Group Leader for Virtual Model Build and Analysis. He holds a PHD in philosophy focused in mechanical engineering from Coventry University.

Steve White looks after Altair’s UK technical support team having joined the company in 2018. In his presentation, Steve is going to give us a brief overview and demo of the HyperWorks pre- and post-processing solutions, demonstrating the intuitive user interface and efficient workflows that can lead to significant time reductions in your model build activities.

Ross Atherton is a Structural Systems Design Engineer in the Rolls-Royce Civil Aerospace Future Programmes Engineering department. After a period of supporting Rolls-Royce’s growing large engine fleet, Ross turned to future products; and has since led a small team designing, assessing, and enhancing the conceptual product architecture of future market opportunities. Ross’ presentation will go into detail on how Rolls-Royce have deployed the Altair Hyperworks toolset to enhance the structural efficiency of their UltraFan engine, covering: rapid model and mesh creation; new insights from structural optimisation and robust design; integrated post-processing; and the resulting acceleration of the engineering design iteration cycle.

Gonçalo Pereira, Principal Application Engineer at Altair, gives an overview of the all new HyperWorks CFD to demonstrate the latest streamlined workflows and optimised technologies dedicated to CFD Application. This new App opens the door to a Solution focused workflow that enables each user to access intuitive CAD clean-up tools, efficient surface and volume meshing and easy to use model set-up for flow and thermal simulations.

Julien Hoyez, Senior Application Engineer at Altair takes us through Altair’s revolutionary new composite modelling workflow, aimed at accelerating and simplifying every stage of pre-processing. Julien will show us how the dedicated Composites Browser in HyperWorks 2020’s streamlined and intuitive interface enables you to rapidly model, manipulate and review ply-based models.

Matt Kedgley from Engenuity introduces us to FiRMA, an analysis method that tackles the difficult task of predicting the structural performance of randomly oriented fibre composite components. This method has been developed and made possible using a customisation of Hypermesh. The Finite Element (FE) models are pre-processed into the FiRMA format before being submitted for analysis solve through HyperStudy.

Kenneth King is a Stress Engineer for the aerospace sector for Atkins. He’s is a chartered engineer with over 10 years’ experience in stress analysis using hand calculations and finite element analysis. While working at Atkins Aerospace he has been involved in projects on Airbus A350 and Single Aisle Aircraft. In addition to aerospace sector, he has worked in infrastructure, rail, offshore wind, nuclear and oil & gas sectors. Kenneth shows us a real life example of how Hypermesh has saved modelling time of finite element models when designing composite bridge structures. He will show us how the Hypermorph module in Hypermesh can be used to drive the design analysis cost down by reducing model creation lead time.

This presentation is by Program Manager Rob Jopson. It’s a given that the simulation models we build are intended to capture and predict physical behavior, the data used to create them is not always representative of the manufacturing process used to build the physical part. For layered composite parts in particular, this mismatch can cause significant overhead in managing the simulation data as the model is created and evolves. To solve this problem, Altair’s ply-based modeling methodology strives to maintain a 1:1 relationship between the simulation data and the manufacturing process, independent of solver. The latest developments of this methodology will be presented as a workflow in the new Composite Browser, available in HyperWorks. The recording is about 18 minutes long and was originally presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

This workshop on end-to-end workflow for modeling layered composites in HyperWorks was conducted by Program Manager André Möenicke. The recording is about an hour and 37 minutes long, and and was first presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

This workshop on molding and structural simulation of injection molded parts was conducted by Frank Ehrhart, EMEA Technical Specialist - Material Engineering/Multiscale Designer. The recording is a little over an hour long, and and was first presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

Variational asymptotic beam section (VABS) is a unique technology continuously funded by the US Army since 1988 and it has become a tool of choice in the helicopter and wind turbine industries for modeling composite rotor blades. With analysis of a finite element meshed cross section, VABS can compute the best set of beam properties for 1D beam analysis and also accurately recover 3D stress/strain distribution over the cross section. VABS has been integrated with HyperWorks and OptiStruct for Altair users to take advantage of this powerful technology for better design and analysis of composite beam-like structures.  The recording of the presentation by Dr. Wenbin Yu, CTO of AnalySwift, is almost 20 minutes long, and was originally presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

This workshop on end-to-end workflow for modeling layered composites in HyperWorks was conducted by Program Manager Rob Jopson. The recording is about an hour and 32 minutes long, and and was first presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

This workshop on material characterization/ virtual testing was conducted by Jeff Wollschlager, VP of Composites Technology. The recording is about an hour and 32 minutes long, and and was first presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

This presentation is by Markku Palanterä, Director Composites Business Development, Altair The composites design and simulation suite by Altair is actively developed with a holistic view to cover all stages of the process from material modeling all the way to the certification of composite structures. On the material modeling side, the focus is on continuous further development of Altair’s multiscale modeling technology for continuous fiber composites and injection molded plastics, but not forgetting further application areas, such as additive manufacturing. The ply-based composite modeling in Altair HyperWorks has recently undergone a major update to achieve an improved, more efficient modeling workflow. This together with planned further developments tie the modeling even better with the manufacturing to create realistic models of composite components as built. Altair’s solver technology for implicit and explicit analyses can utilize multiscale material models to accurately describe composite material nonlinear behavior up to failure. Altair’s unique composites optimization technology is being enhanced with the repeat laminate concept that provides added efficiency and user control over lay-up design. To further complement the idea of an integrated system with all the necessary composites capabilities, the Composite Stress Toolbox has been introduced in HyperWorks to support design and certification. The recording is about 22 minutes long and was originally presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

In this presentation, Dr Jacob Fish, Professor, Columbia University, introduces some of the key concepts and approaches in multiscale modeling, highlights recent advances aimed at developing practical multiscale tools, and survey the current landscape in multiscale modeling ranging from linking atomistic-to-continuum and continuum-to-continuum scales, physics and data-driven multiscale approaches, and applications in automotive, aerospace and biomedical industries. The recording is about 41 minutes long and was originally presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

This presentation is by André Mönicke, Program Manager Classical composite analysis and certification methods continue to be used in a significant share of the composite design process. In particular, applying classical methods early in design, and integrating them with finite methods as soon as possible can allow faster decisions which will be rewarded when it comes time for certification. Altair’s latest developments to respond to those needs will be presented, covering the Integrated Composite Stress Toolbox and a Certification framework available in HyperWorks. The recording is about 20 minutes long and was originally presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

This presentation is by Dávid Migács, R&D Engineer at CIKONI GmbH. A key design issue for new hydrogen-based vehicle drive systems is assuring safety of the start-of-the-art polymer lined, carbon fiber overwrapped vessels working at pressures over 700 bar. Cikoni will describe how a multiscale approach gives a better estimation of burst pressures and insight into damage mechanisms for different laminate layups, at both the macroscopic and micromechanical levels, to validate simulation models for structural optimization of layups, along with life predictions. The recording is about 28 minutes long and was originally presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.

This presentation is by Dr. Tomasz Garstka and Graham Barnes, LMAT Ltd. Manufacturing induced deformations and residual stresses are an unavoidable consequence of processing composites at elevated temperatures. A number of mechanisms have been identified causing residual stresses and distortions, including mismatch in the thermal expansion, cure shrinkage of the resin, consolidation and tool-part interaction. These mechanisms usually act collectively through the curing process and may lead to severe changes in the laminate characteristic. When cured and exposed to natural environment moisture swelling, as well as subsequent stress relaxation mechanisms lead to further geometrical changes. A novel cure simulation solver is demonstrated here with the application to typical aircraft components. The recording is about 10 minutes long and was originally presented at the 2020 ATCx Composites.