Outstanding Scalability at NIAR - Advanced crash analysis solution proves twice as fast as leading competitor

Jyoti CNC Automation Ltd. designs and manufactures a wide array of CNC Machines for metal cutting industries. They utilized Altair HyperMesh to optimize the existing design and improve static stiffness of their machines, and Altair HyperWorks to reach the optimized design and arrangement. Altair OptiStruct solver was then used to validate the effectiveness of the optimized product design. The result was an immense benefit in terms of resources and cost saved as mechanical accuracies were ensured right at the stage of the FEA software level, without having to create the physical prototype.

Established in the early 1990s and headquartered in Gemlik, Borçelik is the highest quality galvanized steel producer, with the largest production capacity in Turkey. They are engaged in manufacturing hot dip galvanized steel, cold-rolled steel and hot-rolled (pickled and oiled) steel groups, all of which are industrial raw material inputs. Reducing emissions and fuel consumption drives the development of advanced materials and production processes in the automotive industry. Fuel efficiency relies on the successful design of vehicles and developing technologies that reduce the weight of vehicle body structure. There is always a need for research and development to maintain passenger safety while reducing the mass of the vehicle structure. A study was conducted to investigate the ductile fracture behavior of the high-strength galvanized flat steel that forms a vehicle body structure. To reduce the analysis calculation time, mass scaling was applied using the /DT/NODA/CST option which controls the nodal time step, and reduced the simulation time by nearly 50%. In terms of quality-related challenges, Borçelik saved nearly 10% of scrap material, and reduced costs by 5% after working with the design of experiments and applying numerical calculations through Altair simulation solutions.

For more than 60 years, L&L Products have been providing unique solutions to the automotive industry. L&L Products Composite Body Solutions (CBS™) structural reinforcement technology is commonly used to enhance overall body-in-white (BIW) stiffness, other benefits include load path management, section integrity, light-weighting, increased durability, while having no impact in body shop practices. CBS™ aims to deliver an efficient solution for both current and future-ready applications requiring lightweighting. L&L Products reduced their concept topology optimization model build times by 80% by using the Altair® HyperWorks® Local Design Space workflow. The ability to create models more efficiently provides a mechanism to arrive at an optimal solution quickly, streamlines in-house processes removing the dependency on other teams, and provides an opportunity to explore more design variants to arrive at a truly optimal solution.

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.

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.

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.

The idea for its cooling technology for electric motor systems was born at high-tech start-up Dynamic E flow (DEF), when the founders first experienced an overheated engine of an electrical car. The existent development process at DEF used analytical methods and physical testing to confirm results. With increasing customization, that process was not flexible enough to handle various design possibilities. With the need for a simulative design approach, DEF employed Altair software to tackle its multi-physical design challenges, and to meet all the customer requirements for their unique motors, test hundreds of variants, and to check the feasibility of the customized product.

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.

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.

TGM Lightweight Solutions is an engineering services company with a focus on lightweight design and strategic weight optimization for aircraft, rail cars, road vehicles, and marine vessels. For a recent customer project requiring weight reduction of a railway container, TGM used Altair HyperWorks to achieve the target weight. Topology optimization helped identify the weight savings potential, resulting in material and cost savings, and a 20% reduction in weight while meeting tight development schedules.

When Ana Casares Crespo, a former member of the ARUS Andalucía Racing team from University Seville in Spain, was looking for a final degree project, the team was inspired by the capabilities of Altair’s software. They came up with the idea to improve the impact properties of the vehicle nose cone laminate with the help of simulation. With more than seven students actively using Altair products to improve various aspects of the vehicle, the decision to incorporate Altair tools was an obvious choice. They wanted to make use of the knowledge they had gained from previous studies for structural design of aerodynamic packages. The team conducted static analysis and topological optimization using tools from the Altair HyperWorks™ suite, which helped them create optimized, lighter components. To improve the impact properties of a Formula SAE car’s nose cone laminate, the Altair solution included structural analysis, and topology optimization verifying structural behavior of a new material. The benefits were improved impact characteristics and fracture properties, and lighter components.

To expand the rpm range of a motorcycle engine, a new type of rocker arm with lower inertia was needed at KTM. The new rocker arm was required to have the same, or better stiffness and deformation level as the previous design. KTM used Altair HyperWorks™ for nonlinear topology optimization and nonlinear structural analysis to develop the new rocker arm. Thanks to this, the component inertia could be reduced by 15 percent, component mass was reduced by 21 percent, and the stiffness increased by 14 percent which lead to an extension of the rotational speed by 150-200 rpm.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is a renowned global architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. Known for some of the world’s most technically and environmentally advanced buildings, SOM applies creativity and emerging technologies to design buildings for the future. SOM designed the new United States Courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles to be an open and transparent public space, while also constantly considering the materials used in the project and the project's environmental footprint. The structural design specialists at SOM used Altair OptiStruct to generate an ideal project plan that considered sustainable regulations and manufacturing constraints.

Rimac Automobili’s main challenge has been to design a monocoque as a single carbon fiber part with an unprecedented size. Hence, in the development of the monocoque, the main topic to manage was the material, a lightweight, carbon fiber reinforced with epoxy resin. As this carbon fiber is an orthotropic and brittle material, its representation in a finite element (FE) material card is very difficult. To meet this challenge the company introduced Altair HyperWorks™ into their development process.

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.

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.

Formula SAE is a collegiate design series run by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), which challenges students to design, build and compete with an open wheel style car across various events. The competition pitches various teams across different static events focusing on the teams engineering design decisions, cost planning, marketing strategies and vehicle inspections. The teams also have to compete under various dynamic events like acceleration, skid-pad, autocross and the endurance run where even the fuel economy is checked.

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.

For pioneering a new material application and technology without a road map, Guerrilla Gravity used Altair OptiStruct in the early design design phase. The result was the development of lightweight, high-performance bikes, that are 300% more impact resistant than other frames on the market that use traditional carbon fiber materials, at significant cost savings and shortened timelines.

Statistics on fatal vehicle accidents show that victims most often do not die during or right after a crash, but in the hours and days afterwards, with research indicating that up to 44 percent of people who died in car crashes could possibly have been saved if first responders and hospitals had real-time, detailed information about the victim’s injuries. In an effort to transform data received from the car sensors into meaningful information about the victim's injuries, the MDGo team began applying crash simulation using Altair Radioss™. The Altair Startup program was a major help to the Israeli startup company in creating a system which automatically alerts first responders and hospitals of accidents, and reports on potential injuries.

Czech company Duratec Ltd. develops handmade bike frames using both aluminium and composite materials. For a recent project at Duratec presenting the latest approach in development of carbon fiber optimization of the bike frame, Altair HyperWorks was used for model creation in Altair HyperMesh, optimized via the Altair OptiStruct code and evaluated in Altair HyperView in the development and optimization of a lightweight composite racing bike frame.

Israeli motorsport company Griiip has designed a new, fast and professional race car that combines efficiency in racing with a competitive purchase price and low running costs, to make it more affordable. By harnessing the power of data, Griiip has created the first smart connected race car – the G1 – and with it, an entirely new racing series. Accessing the software via Altair's new Startup Program, Griiip engineers employ several products from the Altair HyperWorks™ suite, among these Altair Radioss™ for crash simulation, Altair OptiStruct™ for structural optimization, general FE analysis as well as Altair HyperMesh™ and Altair HyperView™ for pre- and post-processing tasks in the development of race cars.

Sharda Motor Industries Limited (SMIL) is the market leader in the country in the manufacturing of exhaust systems, catalytic converters, independent suspension systems, seat frames, seat covers (two and four wheelers), soft top canopies, and stamped part for white goods products. Their state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities help them to continuously focus on new products, innovation, technology upgradation, and research & development. The facility seamlessly caters to various emission norms ranging from BS4, BS6, and Tier 4.

Tucked away in a remote location in the mountains, designed by ZHA, the Lushan primary school, when complete, will be an educational institute located 160 kilometers North-West of Nanchang, the capital of China’s Jiangxi province.

Melbourne-based Integrated Design and Engineering Solutions (IDES) provides full “systems-life-cycle” tailored engineering solutions to fulfill demanding defence requirements. For the LAND 121 Phase 3A project involving the procurement of Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon light trucks for the Australian Army, the IDES team had to design a protective module for a G-Wagon variant intended for surveillance and reconnaissance (S&R). Altair HyperWorks was instrumental in enabling the quick, efficient and accurate development of an optimum design for the vehicle rollover protection structure (ROPS), saving valuable time while revising and significantly improving the structures’ strength and safety.

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%.

At the forefront of innovation at CEC Systems is the world’s first semi-automated Collapsible-Economic-Container. Achieving a 4:1 ratio, COLLAPSECON® enables 4 empty containers to be collapsed and combined to form a single container, improving operational efficiency, enhancing return on investment and reducing the impact on the environment. For the design for mass production and optimal operational use, the Altair HyperWorks Suite was leveraged to find solutions for weight reduction without increasing manufacturing costs. The newly engineered container is potentially 30% lighter than the original design, whilst reducing material requirements, increasing manufacturing efficiency, and reducing cost.

For a competition launched for the Museum of the 20th Century, Zaha Hadid Architects re-invented a similarly radical approach by applying new advances in technology to generate structural and architectural expression. With Altair’s assistance, they created a plug-in for their design tool, enabling topology optimization. Altair HyperMesh was used for finite element preprocessing mesh generation, with Altair HyperView providing post-processing and visualization solutions. Structural analysis solver Altair OptiStruct provided advanced analysis and optimization algorithms.

Photovoltaic specialist Thesan, a subsidiary of global manufacturer Savio S.p.A, manufactures, and distributes mounting structures, consisting of a so-called Purlin, a Rafter, and a Pole (and Hat), designed to withstand potentially occurring loads from wind and snow, as well as dead loads. Drawing on the Savio Group’s competence in the design of steel and aluminum structures and thanks to a team of over 40 engineers, they are to satisfy every construction requirement of photovoltaic power plants at all altitude and climatic conditions, using any specific fixation requirements. For a recent project requiring optimization of a mounting structure of a medium sized PV field with a power of 5 MW, engineers used HyperWorks. The benefits included reduced material usage, reduced manufacturing and transportation costs and improved competitiveness for Thesan.

The challenge in the development of Arcimoto’s SRK Generation 8; an all-electric, multi-purpose/utility commuter vehicle, included creation of an optimized platform that offers 3-wheeled stability, a space frame enclosure for protection, and a rear swing arm that handles the load requirements and also follows the visual design of the vehicle. HyperMesh® provided an environment for rapid model generation allowing Arcimoto to answer queries by helping them perform the analysis in OptiStruct® in an easy, time efficient manner. Using RADIOSS® for the physics helped them achieve repeatable and accurate results, reduce simulation cycle times and allow for evaluating multiple design scenarios thus enabling better decisions.

Inspired by zooplankton Radiolaria, artist and architect IL Hoon Roh began creating series of objects known as “Radiolara Experiment” which, through extensive experimentation and collaboration with Altair, ultimately led to the creation of the sophisticated Table Ex-08.

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.

Kampmann GmbH is an internationally leading specialist for heating, cooling, air-conditioning and integrated building automation. Within their virtual development process they are using the Altair HyperWorks® software suite, in particular AcuSolve®, the CFD solver; OptiStruct®, the suite's FE-solver and an optimization tool; and HyperMesh® for modeling and meshing tasks. For plant control design, Kampmann is currently considering solidThinking Activate®, a mapping software for control systems. Thanks to simulation, Kampmann engineers are now able to answer questions regarding the internal processes of the system, which are difficult, if not impossible, to study through physical testing.

HyperWorks and the Altair Partner Alliance Streamline Testing of Truck Components at IVECO Australia

Toolmaking is usually characterized by cost-intensive, custom made, single-unit production. To create innovative tools, the industry increasingly relies on new manufacturing methods such as 3D printing. To meet market demand, PROTIQ GmbH, a spinoff from Phoenix Contact needed to increase productivity through more efficient injection mold tools. The Altair solution included development of optimized tools using simulation, optimization and additive manufacturing (model setup with HyperMesh, topology optimization and FE analysis with OptiStruct, CFD analysis with AcuSolve and refinement with solidThinking Evolve. The benefits included increased productivity due to shorter production cycles, weight reduction of 75%, shortened development time and production costs reduced by 25%.

The company PROTIQ (www.protiq.com) worked with Altair and created a highly efficient molding tool. Optimization with OptiStruct was used to find the optimal design to guarantee the maximum tolerances of the generated products. The cooling process of the product was simulated with CFD (AcuSolve). As an overall result, the cycle time could be significantly decreased and the part quality also improved due to lower thermal deformations.

The successful launch of a new platform UAS is a comprehensive design engineering and manufacturing endeavor. The full lifecycle must consider maintenance and replacement components. As these requirements often require the use of tools (i.e. screw drivers, wrenches, pliers), the concern became apparent that as the flight surfaces are minimum gage, heavy tools dropped on the structure could cause irreparable damage. The objective of this project was to determine the specification for maximum maintenance tool weight such that, if dropped from a nominal height of 0.762 meters, would not cause permanent damage to any part of the Swift020 UAS. The Altair solution included a Radioss Explicit Dynamic Impact Simulation.

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

As Manufacturers of Automotive Components such as Chassis and Brakes, Mando Softtech India has to ensure that they maintain highest performance and quality standards of the products they develop. Implementation of Altair HyperWorks solutions has helped them considerably reduce their product development time and costs, while augmenting product quality. Their overall development time was reduced by up to 30 to 40%.