applications ➤
benefit most from a longer seat cushion. At the same time, with the seatbelt anchorage position, the older children will benefit most with a more forward anchorage location, whereas an infant will benefit most from a rearward anchorage position.’ Ultimately, Hu and his colleagues found that
there was no single system that could protect all occupants. ‘What we recommend is that, in the future, there will need to be some adjustable or adaptive features’ concluded Hu.
Empowering design While much of the focus in simulation is on creating more powerful solvers with additional functionality, that is not the only area of development for crash simulation. Equally as important is the time and money spent on developing tools to facilitate understanding and share information across both design and engineering teams. One aspect of this is the combination of
traditional FEA with powerful visualisation tools that can demonstrate the simulation. Dassault’s Berry explains: ‘Te vision is to put
this technology from SIMULIA, 3d Excite, Catia and others onto what is called a 3D experience platform.’ By combining tools that can provide the
engineering precision and accuracy with the visualisation capabilities and real-time interaction of DS’ 3D Excite, Deltagen provides a much more
COSTS SIMULATIONS ARE NOW PROVIDING NEW INSIGHTS INTO COMPONENT BEHAVIOUR
user-friendly experience for users who are not experts in mechanical engineering. ‘When we put this information into the
3D experience platform, it allows us to take simulation and spread it beyond just the engineering department. Te promise is to bring these products together and expose simulation and its values to a much wider audience,’ explained Berry.
The future of simulation In the opinion of Berry, one way that companies like Dassault Systèmes can help to alleviate the challenges of increasing complexity is to help facilitate the use of simulation tools to a wider audience. ‘Te democratisation of engineering tools is
where DS is headed. I think it is where the whole simulation industry is headed’ said Berry. ‘Te use of tools like Abaqus has been
32 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
High-quality visualisation allows engineers to predict simulation results intuitively
successful and, even though they are specialist tools, they have still had a very broad reach. Now business leaders – not just the engineering leaders – are starting to take notice.’
Future development of simulation tools Another aspect of simulation that will continue to drive a need for more computing power will be the increasing size of simulations. Te project run by PSA and Altair is an example of some of the largest crash simulations, but Di Valentin expects that this will become much more frequent in the future: ‘It is true that it is not common to use 8,000 cores, but it is something that we see will come very quickly, because the size of HPC systems is growing.’ Di Valentin commented that, between three
and five years, ‘we will have more and more models with 25,000,000 million elements because of a need to go into higher detail for some simulations.’ ‘We can model many things, but we have some
physical phenomena which are very important in crash simulation. We are not capable of modelling these things correctly’ said Laurent. ‘Te main problem we have is rupture’ said
Laurent. He explained that a crash causes ruptures of many components that all act differently, based on material composition and the forces and strain involved in the crash. To overcome these challenges Altair and PSA
are investing heavily in developing the potential of crash simulation. Tis involves developments in the ability to scale soſtware to higher numbers of cores, as well as integrating new soſtware factors that can more accurately predict material behaviours. Terrier commented that Altair is already
working on new capabilities that will further improve crash simulation. One such example is the acquisition of Click2Cast, a simulation tool used to emulate the casting process of new materials. Altair acquired Click2Cast in 2015 and
has already integrated the soſtware into its HyperWorks soſtware portfolio. Terrier commented that Altair is now working to integrate the soſtware so that it can be coupled with RADIOSS, providing more detailed analysis of both the casting processes and any potential material defects imposed through the creation of new components. Terrier predicted that the process of coupling
Click2Cast to RADIOSS would take between 12 and 18 months.
Simulation enables new insights While simulation can shorten product development times and reduce costs, simulations are now creating new insights into component behaviour that cannot be derived from traditional physical testing. Laurent gave two examples from the B-pillar
project: the thickness variation of material, and the plastic strain on the part during the crash. Laurent explained that characterising the potential material deformations would be too time-consuming and costly, while understanding material strain cannot be acheived without the use of simulation. Laurent gave an example of a gearbox or engine
mount that links the engine and gearbox to the structure in the front of the car. ‘ To check the timing of the rupture of the
gearbox mount is very important in the crash scenario, said Laurent, adding: ‘We know precisely when the rupture starts inside the gearbox mount. ‘Tis information is not easy to analyse in a full
car crash.’ Laurent explained that a physical test could
give you an idea of when something has broken, but not pinpoint the time and start of a rupture accurately. ‘Te information that this simulation is able
to provide to us is extremely important for improving or validating the design,’ concluded Laurent. l
@scwmagazine l
www.scientific-computing.com
Dassault Systemes/Honda
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