The Future of Plastics Simulation

The strength assessment of plastic components is often a problem in practice. It is important for the beneficial application of simulation to achieve a good trade-off between the simplest possible modeling approaches (material model, strength assessment) and sufficient fidelity of the simulation results. If non-standardized simulation and assessment approaches are used, or experience-based, subjective procedures are employed, uncertainties follow and the comparability of different analyses is often not possible. Therefore, a workflow of Altair and partner software is shown to avoid such uncertainties and two examples from medical industry are used to display the benefits. Simplified procedures help to reduce the work load and increases the confidence in simulation results. The standardized procedure avoids mistakes and assures that reproducibility and comparability of the results is always given. Presenter: Sascha Pazour, Engineer, PART Engineering GmbH Featuring S-Life Plastics, available through the Altair Partner Alliance

Süddeutsche Gelenkscheibenfabrik (SGF) was tasked with assessing the fatigue strength of an elastic coupling under rotating loads according to the FKM guideline. Learn how using S-Life FKM by PART Engineering, available through the Altair Partner Alliance, helped SGF reduce simulation time and lower the possibility of errors and misinterpretation of results.

Lightweight design often is all about replacing metal parts with plastics. Simulation tools are useful to avoid oversized parts and verify its physical integrity early in the development process. But to do it right, influences of the manufacturing process and the right material choice are essential. During this webinar, this process will be outlined for an injection molded short-fiber-reinforced plastic part. The effects of weld lines, fiber orientation, temperature and more, on the part's strength cannot be ignored. How such influences are easily considered will be shown in this webinar. Presenter: Sascha Pazour | Engineer, PART Engineering GmbH Featuring Converse and S-Life Plastics by PART Engineering, available through the Altair Partner Alliance.

An Introductory webinar to S-Life Plastics by PART Engineering, available through the Altair Partner Alliance. S-Life-Plastics is an easy-to-use software that conducts a short-term, long-term and fatigue strength assessment based on FEA results for plastic components made out of unreinforced or reinforced thermoplastic materials. In order to conduct a strength assessment S-Life Plastics only needs the local stress tensor, provided by the appropriate result file of the particular FE solver. Additionally the user has to enter some basic information about the material and loading conditions. With that S-Life Plastics provides the resulting static and cyclic utilization ratios as contour plots. For every individual node a comprehensive numerical report of the most important assessment variables can be requested for documentation purposes.

S-Life-Plastics is an easy-to-use software that conducts a short-term, long-term and fatigue strength assessment based on FEA results for plastic components made out of unreinforced or reinforced thermoplastic materials.

CONVERSE is an easy-to-use software that bridges the gap between injection molding simulation and mechanical simulation.

S-Life FKM is a static and fatigue strength software for the assessment of FEA results according to the FKM guideline.

In this webinar, a procedure for the prediction of the vibration behavior of short fiber reinforced structural components considering the anisotropic material properties is presented. The fiber orientation is determined by an injection molding simulation and transferred to the structural mechanics model. The determination of the anisotropic stiffness characteristics of the composite material is based on a multiscale material model. The identification of the parameters of the material model is carried out by comparison with resonance measurements on simple bending bars. As an example, results for an engine bracket are presented. Due to the comparatively simple application and scalability of the procedure, high-performance computations can also be conducted for large models.

Improved Prediction of the Vibration Behavior of Short-Fiber Reinforced Engine Brackets

This guest contribution on the Altair Blog is written by Dr. Marcus Stojek, Managing Director at PART Engineering, developers of CONVERSE and S-Life-FKM. PART Engineering is a member of the Altair Partner Alliance.

S-Life FKM is a software that enables an easy and automatic assessment of FEM simulation results according to the German FKM guideline. The FKM guideline is a comprehensive German guideline with approx. 230 pages describing the static and fatigue strength assessments based on local stresses, thus it is applicable for results obtained by FEA.

An introductory webinar to S-Life FKM, a static and fatigue strength software for the assessment of FEA results according to FKM guideline. S-Life FKM is a software that enables an easy and automatic assessment of FEM simulation results according to the German FKM guideline.

The following example only shows a quick overview of the S-Life FKM workflow.

Presentation introducing a few of the top use cases for static and fatigue strength software, S-Life FKM.

In this webinar, learn how CONVERSE enables the consideration of the real anisotropic mechanical behavior of short-fiber-reinforced materials in an FE analysis. More precisely predicting part stiffness and failure. Significantly enhancing FEA reliability.

With use of today’s technology, FE simulation of the injection molding process is state of the art. Several unique solvers are available for this purpose. However, an appropriate coupling between the injection molding simulation and the mechanical simulation is required.

Presentation introducing a few of the top use cases for the composites software, CONVERSE.

Use case showing how to apply CONVERSE by PART Engineering to bridge the gap between injection molding simulation and mechanical simulation.

This webinar shows possibilities to enhance your FE Analysis of fiber-reinforced plastics and explains the best way to extract more reliable information out of your parts. Focusing on the anisotropic material behavior, the workflow will show the mapping of fiber orientation results from Moldex3D onto the FE solver OptiStruct by using Converse. The whole chain will be explained from “what is the main issue with short-fiber-reinforced plastics” to “what effort/benefit ratio can be expected”. Please note: You will need to login to Altair Connect to view this recording.

For fiber reinforced automotive parts the consideration of anisotropic material behavior is required to receive reliable results. In the scope of this fact a procedure is described how to consider these effects in terms of process-structure interaction and how to achieve possible benefits such as weight reduction and shorter development cycles. The procedure is outlined with practical applications from company Valeo Ligthing Systems and another industrial partner project that is currently still in progress.

Using the anisotropic material behavior of short fiber reinforced plastics by assigning the fiber orientation and appropriate material behavior to your parts easily. The general procedure and the outcoming benefit will be shown with industrial part examples using the software CONVERSE.

Watch this 45-minute webinar recording to learn the latest advancements in composites design and optimization of carbon fiber composites and mixed material structures in the automotive industry. Capabilities included in Altair HyperWorks as well as third party products available through the Altair Partner Alliance will be illustrated, showing real life examples of application.

The Altair Partner Alliance's Technical Director reflects on proper design validation when it comes to fiber reinforced plastics.

Valeo was able to cover a broad range of simulation tasks for model preparation of glass fiber polymer composite parts by applying CONVERSE by PART Engineering alongside HyperWorks.

Interview with Sascha Pazour from PART Engineering about possible applications, tips and facts about using CONVERSE.