This post was taken from Altair Enlighten and contributed by my colleague, Regu Ramoo, Director of Engineering at Altair ProductDesign.

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. Read More

In September I spoke in Seattle, Wash., at the High Performance Composites in Aircraft Interiors Conference, sponsored by CompositesWorld.  It was an excellent conference, with representatives from the OEMs and suppliers from the interiors, seating, component and materials industries.  My presentation focused on Altair’s efforts in the design of aircraft seating to reduce weight and insure safety.  You can read a short summary of my talk in High Performance Composites.  You can also view my presentation on the Altair HyperWorks website.

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This post was taken from Altair Enlighten and contributed by my colleague, Lars Fredriksson, Director at Altair ProductDesign, Germany.

Back in January 2012, Altair entered into a partnership with advanced materials specialists, Caterham Composites, to improve each other’s knowledge on the design, simulation and manufacture of composite materials. We even wrote a press release about it explaining how the two companies planned to work together.

Here in Germany, we’ve seen more and more industries looking into composite materials as they seek to take advantage of its inherent weight advantages and impressive strength characteristics. However, the materials bring with them an extra layer of design complexity that can cause problems for manufacturers hoping to simply swap out their current metallic components for lightweight composite alternatives, often referred to as a ‘black metal’ solution.

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This post was taken from Altair Enlighten and contributed by my colleague, Tim Smith, Director of Design Engineering at Altair ProductDesign.

I am sure we are all familiar with the standard marketing come-on of getting something for free, a free lunch, weekend get-away or perhaps, in its most effective form, free beer. I am sure we are equally familiar with the standard response to these come-ons that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” For us engineers who need to take weight out of our products, I think what follows may be the closest thing to a free lunch that we can get. If you can spare me a few minutes, I will explain. Read More

I was chatting recently with fellow Altair blogger Bob Yancey about the use of the word composites. Yancey will often write about the application of high-end laminate constructions for aerospace applications. While this is a similar type of composite to those used by our racecar customers, such as Dallara, most automotive composites are perhaps better described as engineered plastics. The engineered part of that name is important, as not all plastics are composites; that soda bottle you drank from earlier was just plastic.

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