Altair’s OptiStruct technology and 3D printing are becoming great partners.  OptiStruct’s topology optimization creates the most efficient structure for the given loads as recently described in a Forbes article.  It produces organic-like structures that can sometimes be difficult to manufacture.  3D Printing gives us the opportunity to directly print any structure we can imagine so we can now truly manufacture the most optimal design.

At our recent Altair Technology Conference in Turin, Italy, we brought together industry leaders and experts in the use of 3D printing technology to discuss this technology and where it is going.  It was a great session and shows how 3D printing and topology optimization can revolutionize the way we design and build in the future.  You can read more about this session and review the presentations here. 

As engineers in an ideal world, we would use design optimization techniques on every single component in a product in order to ensure the entire structure is as lightweight as possible. In reality however, this is rarely a practical exercise as we all need to meet development schedules with a limited amount of resources.So when faced with an existing design and often hundreds of components that could potentially be optimized, how do you know which ones could yield the biggest weight savings?

The answer is to screen a product’s components during the early stage of the development process. The screening process helps to answer several vital questions when assessing where to focus time and energy such as:

- Which steps are necessary to enhance the product?

- What does this mean economically?

- How large is the economic and technical potential of an optimization project?

- How much will it cost and how much effort will be required for an optimization project   compared to its benefit?

- What are the consequence-, synergy- or interdependency-effects which may come up   during the optimization project?

- What are convenient or realistic development targets?

At a recent NAFEMS event a colleague of mine, Adrian Wischnewski of Altair ProductDesign in Germany presented a session on developing a screening process for the strategic application of optimization technology into a product development cycle.

You can view a 15 minute recording of the presentation below which gives a great insight into the process and its potential impact on a product’s weight by clicking the link here.

“Michigan company ramps up production of money-saving, green LED lighting” shares the strengths of switching to LED lighting sources for businesses, the environment and for maintenance workers. Cost savings is one of several reasons why the market is gravitating toward LEDs, but because LED lights also are the green manufacturing choice, TOGGLED is gaining momentum in Michigan.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that energy consumption for lighting can be reduced by more than 20 percent by 2020 through the use of solid-state LED-based lighting. To read more about TOGGLED’s plans to contribute to the solid-state lighting industry growth, read the full article here.

Earlier this month, Edison2 unveiled their latest VLC inside Henry Ford Museum’s Driving America exhibit and it will be on display through the end of next month. Below is an article that originally appeared on the Enlighten weight news page sharing insights into the latest unveiling.

After an introduction by Patricia Mooradian, The Henry Ford’s president, Oliver Kuttner spoke about Edison2′s achievements over the last five years and their mission to provide affordable, efficient and sustainable transportation solutions. Illustrating the expected automotive landscape in the near future, Oliver showed how the virtues of the VLC architecture could have huge implications on vehicle markets domestic and worldwide.

During the speech, a 10′x12′ banner depicting the new Edison VLC 4.0 vehicle in complete form was uncovered just before Kuttner and Mooradian unveiled the new Edison2 VLC rolling chassis staged in front of the banner.

The Edison2 Very Light Car new architecture

“This is disruptive technology,” Kuttner said, “This can change the entire industry. This can change the economies of nations, and my task today is to explain this to you.” Kuttner provided background on Edison2 and highlighted the challenges automakers face with new CO2 laws. “The industry is being asked to double its fuel efficiency – in one full development cycle. This is very difficult to do.” Kuttner emphasized what was required to win the Automotive X Prize: “Get the weight out – reduce aerodynamic drag,” a philosophy that automakers are now weaving into vehicle advertisements and specifications.

After the unveiling, Kuttner gave an overview of the vehicle, explaining the advantages of their new architecture and highlighting Edison2′s design focus on consumer needs – aesthetics, additional room, ease of entry/exit and more before moving onto its enabling technology: the suspension.

Kuttner’s primary focus was the Edison2 in-wheel suspension. “It starts from the suspension,” he said. He described how their patented suspension significantly reduces mass, complexity, parts count, and enables a long list of advantages, which include the opportunity to design safer, better handling, more aerodynamic vehicles with unprecedented efficiency. “We believe we can replace the twist beam suspension, even in existing cars…but it will take time.”

“In the end it’s all about efficiency,” Kuttner said, “and efficiency is all about cost.” He went into detail about economic advantages of the VLC architecture to global automakers and their consumers. He also described how reducing vehicle energy requirement is an important objective in meeting global reductions in GHG vehicle emissions, and managing energy challenges and costs worldwide. “This car opens up the possibility for a whole new type of car…in a much more responsible, sustainable way to the future.”

CAFE standards for model year 2017 have automakers looking towards lightweight materials to help meet automotive fuel economy benchmarks.

Prior to model year 2011, all manufacturer vehicle fleets needed to meet the same basic fuel economy targets: 27.5 mpg for passenger cars and 23.5 mpg for light trucks.  To meet fuel economy CAFE standards for a particular model year, manufacturers would often offset the sales of less fuel efficient vehicles with smaller fuel efficient vehicles. This has led to the belief that any increase in CAFE requirements would result in the demise of larger vehicles.

Image courtesy of AOL Autos: http://autos.aol.com/article/fuel-economy-standards-survey/

However, what is often overlooked is that starting in model year 2011 each manufacturer’s fleet fuel economy requirement is based on the average vehicle footprint (i.e., track width x wheelbase) for that fleet.  What does that mean?  Essentially, smaller vehicles need to achieve higher fuel economy ratings than their larger cousins to meet the standard.  The figure below provides a snapshot of just a few vehicles of various sizes and how they compare to the CAFE standards established for MY 2017.

As you would expect, the smaller cars do indeed achieve better fuel economy ratings; however, because of the footprint basis for fuel economy those smaller cars must improve just as much as the larger less fuel efficient vehicles.

With the new footprint based fuel economy regulations, automakers will need to find ways to improve fuel efficiency for all vehicles.  For those that promote fuel efficient technologies (such as lightweighting), the future is bright.

More information is available at Center for Automotive Research or learn about CAR’s Coalition for Automotive Lightweighting Materials (CALM).

Many studies on automotive mass reduction have been undertaken over the years by various steel, aluminum, magnesium, and composites consortia, all expounding the virtues of substituting a particular material. Altair has participated in studies with all these organizations over the years and has understood the strengths, limitations, and constraints of working with various materials.

AHSS, HSS, Al, Mg, Ti, GFRP, CFRP…

High Strength Steels, Aluminum, and Magnesium all have certain advantages in specific applications. Understanding when to exploit the unique advantages of these materials while concurrently minimizing the associated cost penalty is key in any weight reduction challenge.

Where energy mitigation is the driver, High Strength Steels (HSS) traditionally have an advantage but where strength and stiffness are dominant and durability is of less concern, significant weight save can be realized by using aluminum and magnesium. Depending on the part geometry, processing, and manufacturing constraints, one may yield a lower cost penalty and greater weight save.

Degradation of strength & fatigue properties due to welding, as well as issues related to joining dissimilar materials, such as expansivity mismatch and galvanic corrosion  are some issues that must be considered in the overall design. When the design freedom allows for expanding the package space to accommodate larger sections or when certain net-shape re-designs to consolidate features can be exploited, composites can have a significant advantage.

Understanding Dominant Loading Characteristics

Except for idealized theoretical models, most real world structures see a multitude of loads making selection of the optimal material usage difficult without the right toolset, and materials and manufacturing knowledge. Front crash rails are predominantly loaded in the axial direction requiring the capacity to accommodate high plastic strains while side impact structures are loaded mostly bending requiring high yield strength.

The passenger compartment and green-house structure must minimize intrusion and provide adequate stiffness to meet NVH requirements.

When designing with different materials, the existence of varying dominant loads in different regions of the vehicle structure must be exploited. The use of Topology Optimization early in the design development phase can help distinguish regions that are stiffness dominant and those that are strength dominant. Regions that are strength dominant benefit the most from using high specific strength materials.

Steel body in white (BIW) structures have employed Boron steels, HSLA, dual phase materials, foam injected joints, composite inserts, and advanced processing methods like tailor-welded blanks, 4-t welds, deep draw reinforcements, and many other innovative methodologies to improve the stiffness and strength to weight ratios.

While much research has gone into developing AHSS with higher strengths and more formability, the specific stiffness of all grades of steels are still very comparable. Vehicle NVH attributes are almost totally driven by specific bending stiffness which gives aluminum and magnesium a significant advantage. Durability attributes are also somewhat driven by vehicle stiffness but high strength local reinforcements can make up for any local compliance to meet design targets.

So what is a more systematic way for deploying multi-material optimization?

Here is a system that if conformed to, can get you the greatest gains.  Start with a high level topology optimization to see where is the best place to put material. Then consider what the dominant load sets for different regions are.  Put together a spread-sheet of all the materials at your disposal and attributes you have to design to meet:

Cost and weight should certainly be a consideration but you would need to understand the manufacturing methods (stamped, extruded, roll formed, die cast) and volumes, as more often than not, those are larger cost drivers than the material cost per pound. A cursory look at the specific material performance will provide some insight on the weight and associated cost:

If you are looking for bending stiffness, magnesium or aluminum would be my choice. If you need high threshold strength to meet fatigue loads or ultimate loads, HS steel may be good a choice or aluminum if you have the space claim available to package the section size or thickness you need but be mindful of the degradation around the heat affected zones. Of course the complexities associated with joining dissimilar materials (which by itself warrants another blog) must be thought through early.

If you are still not sure on how to mix it up to get the best bang for your buck, contact us at Altair ProductDesign and we’ll be glad to help!

Here’s an excerpt:

The third aspect of enabling enterprise in the cloud environment is HyperWorks remote visualization. “Because we’re running massive amounts of simulations, the biggest bottleneck in the industry has been being able to move this data back and forth from the server side,” said Ravi Kunju, head of strategy and marketing for Altair Enterprise Solutions. By adding remote visualization, Altair has been able to bypass this bottleneck altogether.

Check out the full article here.

In my new role as Altair’s Vice President of Global Automotive, I look forward to sharing automotive trends and news with you. To kick off my posts, I wanted to provide my insights on advancing composites in the auto industry by answering some of the most important questions about Altair’s role in the use of composites for today’s vehicles.

Success in developing the new generation of cars and trucks has demanded advancements in many arenas, including powertrains, fuels, materials, manufacturing methods and design. Computer-aided engineering tools from Altair have advanced as well allowing design engineers to improve vehicle efficiency and performance while at the same time lightening the vehicle structure.

What role will modeling and FE analysis tools play in accelerating composites growth in the automotive sector?

Today, the use of finite element simulation and CAE is an established part of the design process for all OEMs confronting the challenges of increasingly complex products and high costs for physical test verification. Automakers have developed successful simulation processes to meet complex crash, NVH, durability, vehicle dynamics, thermal and aerodynamic requirements.  These processes are evolving allowing for accurate simulation with advanced composite materials.

CAE simulation is already widely used in parts made of common metal and engineered plastic materials (particulate composites with short, long fibers) and is now offered for the most advanced new composites (i.e., continuous carbon-fiber laminates). The availability of reliable simulation technology will catalyze composites growth, bringing confidence to design engineers and management already comfortable with what CAE delivers for traditional metal-based vehicles.

One of the biggest roadblocks facing composites is the challenge of their integration into the existing infrastructure serving the automotive sector.  Infrastructure challenges span the entire product lifecycle, from joining processes in assembly plants to paint lines, all the way to body repair shops.  Ultimately, any future benefits from reductions in composites material cost or from more efficient manufacturing techniques may be less of a game-changer for growth if not paralleled with advancements in design technologies like CAE.

Tools like Altair HyperWorks can help bringing the technology used in racing cars to mainstream vehicle keeping cost down – a Dallara Indycar optimized with HyperWorks is shown

Can these design-engineering activities help to bring the cost of composites down to a level suitable for mainstream vehicles? If so, how? And in what timeframe?

Composites, and in particular laminate composites, are seen as costly alternatives to metals. In attempting to bring down the cost of composites, it is essential to use CAE-based optimization to reduce material usage and design the part efficiently.

For carbon-fiber laminate composites, however, software optimization goes beyond material saving alone. Optimization is a comprehensive solution aimed at guiding and simplifying the design of laminate composite structures. The design flexibility offered by composites derives mostly from the ability to tailor the material itself to the loading requirements. Optimization is the best strategy in the hand of design engineers to choose the right selection of laminate ply thicknesses, orientations and stacking. Unless an optimized design is followed, the results often will be a composite part overdesigned with redundant material that adds cost and weight.

Additionally the cost of an automotive component stems not just from the material itself but also from R&D, manufacturing and assembly of the components, which particularly for smaller productions may consume a larger portion of the final cost. CAE-based design helps easily identify opportunities for part consolidation, which is one of the tactical advantages of plastic with respect to traditional metals systems often built by assembling multiple smaller parts with multiple connections.

An example of optimization study of a car structural architecture with Altair OptiStruct

Does Altair’s composites modeling suite focus on manufacturing aspects as well as product design?

Altair’s composite modeling suite is mainly tailored to the needs of composites designer engineers, but it does so taking into account many of the constraints required by manufacturing. Design, manufacturing and assembly requirements are part of concurrent aspects of solid engineering targeted toward product simplification and cost savings.

In laminate composite software optimization, for example, the CAE analyst may control the minimum and maximum total laminate thickness, the minimum and maximum ply thickness, and the minimum and maximum percentage of a fiber orientation; may enforce constant thickness for a particular ply orientation; and may control balancing and symmetry constraints, ply angle drops,  maximum number of consecutive plies of the same fiber orientation or other constraints and various ply book rules enforced in manufacturing.

Moreover, Altair’s HyperWorks Partner Alliance also offers Moldex, a leading injection-molding simulation solution that enables designers of plastic parts and molds to create in-depth simulation with the widest application range of injection-molding processes to optimize product design and manufacturability.

Injection –molding simulation performed in eDesign (courtesy of Moldex3D)

Where does composites-modeling technology go from here? Are any major advances on the horizon, or major challenges to be overcome?

Because of requirements dominated by the aerospace sector, academic research on  composites, their characterization and CAE modeling technology have been principally focused on structures in the linear material behavior range (stiffness and fatigue) with margins of safety. The understanding of the dynamic performance, energy absorption and failure of composites is not yet as detailed, particularly for parts with complex geometry. Most of the published studies on composites are based on simple geometry, such as axis-symmetric tubes subject to quasi-static loads.  For new automotive fibers, matrices and additives are being introduced into the market to improve composites’ performance and reduce cost.  As a result, further penetration of composites in areas of the vehicle that affect crash performance face a major challenge.  More detailed work on material characterization and modeling is beginning to take place and is required.

How has Altair’s automotive composites design business benefitted from its work for aerospace and/or defense?

The switch from aluminum-centric to composite-intensive airplanes has been a major undertaking for the aerospace industry and its suppliers. Altair in particular has invested significantly in new software technologies and broadened knowledge on composites among developers and the 700+ engineers of Altair ProductDesign. Years of composite focus for aerospace, military, racing and niche-vehicle applications has nurtured new CAE modeling methods for composites, new material models, material fittings techniques, failure modes, adhesive joining, optimization methods and laminate composite post-processing. These are great benefits that Altair now brings to its automotive customers.

Altair’s material-agnostic design approach also helps put the right material in the right place, taking advantage of the unique opportunities offered by composites in the most promising automotive applications.

Leading aircraft OEMs design and manufacture full composite airframes for commercial airliners

What’s your personal outlook for the future of composites in structural automotive applications?

We have witnessed solid growth in the use of plastics and composites over the last decade.  With the elevated attention on fuel efficiency, there is no doubt that this trend will continue.  The increasing variety of low-volume niche vehicles and highly energy-efficient green vehicles will likely demand a growing amount of composite content as crashworthiness design requirements are facilitated.   Mass use for automotive applications will require some significant innovations in manufacturing methods to bring down the current high production costs.

For the auto industry, composites are positioned as welcome solutions to many vehicle requirements, and Altair is positioned to deliver the analytical tools that will help ensure the success of composite materials.

This article is taken from Altair’s HyperWorks Insider Newsletter

It has been a constant human endeavour – across the globe – to make things better and last longer.  In the developing economy, the culture is one of “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.”  The availability of pure research or development funds may be scarce but not the quest to cut cost and / or to get more out of something for little investment.

At Altair, we talk a lot about the need for optimization and its impact on reducing the weight of products but for me optimization can do much more than just provide weight advantages.

While the maximum benefits of optimization can be derived when deployed early by integrating it as part of a new product development process and identified as a gateway for sign off, Altair engineers are equally successful utilizing optimization technology for existing designs and products. This has led to achieving not just weight targets but also improved safety, durability and many other performance attributes associated with the reduction of weight and cost, late on in development.

Looking at the transport industry in parts of Asia where engineering technologies from external countries are commonly used to inform the design of new products, there is a tendency to focus on extending the product’s life cycle.  But over time, the rising oil price became a spoil sport and the home grown methods were no longer providing sufficient performance gains.

Enter Altair technology that addresses product design at all stages of the lifecycle.  Altair’s award winning optimization technology has been put to use to improve the performance to weight ratio to a point where it can give noticeable benefit to the customer as cost savings. Current product development teams deploy optimization techniques to achieve the performance, safety and NVH targets.  Vehicle level targets are cascaded to system, subsystem levels and to component level. To site an example, for good ride & handling, lower un-sprung mass is desirable.

Optimization of un-sprung mass at component level can therefore lead to weight reduction as well as improved handling.  Therefore, the benefits of optimization can go way beyond weight reduction alone.

Take a look at this case study from Vietnam based research company, NEPTECH, regarding the development of a lightweight bus frame. In this particular case, optimization gave several benefits – performance and safety as well as a 17% weight reduction. Further extension could be by sensitivity analysis and fine tune desired attributes.

http://www.altairproductdesign.com/CaseStudyDetail.aspx?id=42

This month, Altair was featured in a Forbes article titled, “Bone-Based Software Improves How We Design, From Detergent To Tanks” focusing on the adaptation of nature’s forms to human problems, a trend called biomimicry, to improve the results of everyday structures and machines. Simulation technology plays a role in creating Abrams M1 tanks and Tide detergent bottles, although each product carries a different capacity of meaning when thinking about how a person can incorporate that into everyday routines.

I believe that in 2013 more people will be able to see the physical evolution of everyday products, like design that simulation technology helps to drive home. I also hope that the technology is understood as improving everyday life, from safety and performance to sustainability.

From theoretical building designs to golf clubs, I believe that this year, we will see an increase in the comprehension of simulation in everyday applications. The technologies behind creating some of the world’s most used and recognized products will continue to resonate with a broader audience, beyond those who see it in action every day.

You can read the full article in Forbes here.