Blog posts

General Motors, in conjunction with SIMULIA Great Lakes, have developed a studio of

Transient dynamic simulations gain importance in the automotive industry and modern fatigue postprocessors are apt to evaluate the fatigue damage. However, additional insight into a structure’s behaviour may be obtained from observing the displacements. Displacement patterns are important for design engineers in order to improve the structure. With proportional static loads it is trivial to display and understand the displacements, but the displacements in dynamic simulations are often very complicated.

MAHLE Powertrain (MPT) is constantly exploring new ways to improve the efficiency and

performance of engines to meet the demanding objectives Automotive OEM’s are faced with

today, i.e. to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. MPT’s key expertise lies in the development of high performance engines with low emissions and excellent fuel economy through the optimisation of gas exchange, combustion, friction and durability.

Hybrid III dummies are among the most frequently used dummies in both industry and academia for vehicle crash safety. Abaqus is one of most widely applied finite element codes in the world. To meet the needs of crash safety analysis and to exploit the potential of the Abaqus/Explicit code, a family of HIII dummies, including HII 50th male, 5th female and 95th male dummies, were developed at FTSS in collaboration with Simulia and BMW. This paper describes in detail the development of the HIII dummies with specific reference to the HIII 50th dummy.

Mercury Marine outboards, engines, and drives are designed to withstand indoor impact testing (called “logstrike”) that simulates a collision with an underwater object. This test is comprised of an outboard or sterndrive device mounted on a mock boat that collides with a simulated log.

For a system which involves a fluid medium contained inside a deformable structure, such as a fuel tank system, a simulation which couples the structure and fluid may be required depending on the system performance metric of interest. Simulation methods for fluid / structure interaction (FSI) have been gradually developed by CAE engineers since the advent of increased computing power. A limitation in using previous FSI simulations is the dynamic event time period that the FSI method can simulate.

In the quest to lower environmental impact while maintaining vehicle performance, automakers and aerospace companies are knocking on the same door – that is, increasing use of composite materials in order to reduce structural mass. It can be expected that material costs will drop considerably over the next few to several years, as the capacity to produce such materials begins to catch up with the growing demand. The benefits of using these materials are well-documented, including their substantial capacity to absorb energy in an impact scenario.

The use of iSight to automate Inergy's simulations related to automotive plastic fuel tank development is highlighted by three examples: 1. the static venting simulation, where the low added value part (finding the position of valves on the tank so that the customer's specifications are fulfilled) is automated. This allows the expert to focus on higher added value tasks. 2. the tank aging simulation, which consists in computing the permanent deformation of the fuel tank caused by the plastic creep.

Typically thermo-mechanical analysis including complexities such as contacts and bolt preloads are carried out using three dimensional models. These analyses require significant time and effort in FE model building, analysis setup, solution, and results processing. It also requires special effort to ensure it is error free.

In order to get stable and accurate results element size and time step selection is very important in transient analysis. These aspects are discussed in this paper.

Mine scale finite element simulations are now a key design and planning tool for some of the

world’s largest and most challenging open pit and deep underground mining projects. Models