Last week, the North American International Auto Show kicked off in Detroit’s newly renovated COBO Center with press and industry preview days before opening the show to the public last weekend. For me, it’s easy to see how simulation technology played a role in the impressive end results for the vehicles exhibited across the show floor. However, that might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you’re staring face-to-face with a stunning concept car.

Lightweight design, performance, fuel efficiency standards, carbon emissions and vehicle safety all will continue to be topics discussed among the many engineers, analysts, automotive enthusiasts and other show attendees. Simulation technology will be inherently present within some of the most impressive products on the show floor. Read More

My colleague, Mike Heskitt, Chief Operating Officer at Altair ProductDesign submitted the following blog post.

It’s good to see another example of the transportation industry adopting the RIGHT hybrid powertrain for a specific need and vehicle type. A recent article in Fleet Owner reports that UPS has purchased 40 hydraulic hybrid delivery vans partially funded through the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Clean Cities program.

For heavy vehicles with more stop-and-go driving than steady-state drive cycles, we’ve seen that hydraulic hybrids have a clear advantage over electric hybrids in relation to power recovery efficiency and lifecycle cost. Read More

Although I didn’t travel to the American Public Transportation Association Annual Meeting and Expo in New Orleans, a number of my Altair colleagues did along with the BUSolutions LCO-140H, the world’s first series hydraulic hybrid transit bus.

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My colleague Narayan Rangarajan, Altair Engineering team leader, has contributed the following post:

If someone came to me today and said that a solar powered server farm is sustained green computing, I would say it’s only half of the equation. Here’s some trivia about solar energy:

1. Solar panels typically convert sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of only 10 to 20 percent.
2. The carbon footprint in manufacturing solar cells is high.
3. Creating solar cells is a high-energy process – it’s not easy to melt silica.

So this brings us to the question, what is sustainable? In my opinion, the top three would be reuse, eliminating waste and innovation. Let’s look at what each one means.

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My colleague Narayan Rangarajan, Altair Engineering team leader, has contributed the following guest post:

I recently read an interesting article that stated “two Google searches on a desktop computer produce 14g of CO₂, which is roughly the equivalent of boiling an electric kettle.”  While Google claims a much smaller CO₂ cost, the math is inescapable. With over 2 million searches a day, it is “the server farms, not the animal farms, that will be increasingly responsible for global warming!” Read More