APPLIED TECHNOLOGY CAD/SOFTWARE
PLM SOFTWARE SOLUTION ENABLES AUTOMAKER TO SUPPORT TORSIONAL VIBRO-ACOUSTIC DRIVELINE OPTIMISATION
D
ealing with extremely demanding quality and performance targets is daily business
at Automobili Lamborghini, one of Italy’s most prestigious sports car brands. These supercars are built to impress. Besides a breathtaking design, sporty driving experience and powerful explosion when pushing the throttle, customers expect to hear the brand’s characteristic sound when “all the horses” are released. Combining those prerequisites can be challenging. Although high-power generation leads to high internal torsional forces, and stable ride and handling calls for a stiff chassis, engineers have to make sure that sound does not become noise and that the produced sound level complies with legislative requirements. Giacomo Papotti and Claudio Manzali, research engineers in the Lamborghini transmission department, witnessed the complexity of conflicting targets while designing the Lamborghini Aventador LB700-4 driveline. “Even the smallest noise that can disturb the
driver needs to be avoided,” says Papotti. “Our test drivers experienced booming noise from the powertrain and a clunking noise from the gearbox while testing prototypes during the development phase. The traditional way to
solve such problems was by adding mass elements to change the eigen-frequencies, or by modifying support stiffness. “But increasing weight obviously has to be
avoided at all times, and there is a risk of introducing new resonances. This manual process requires a lot of iterations and is very lengthy. Our mission was to find an effective simulation process to detect the root cause of noise issues and perform optimisation.”
FAST AND CORRECT MODELLING Lamborghini decided to use LMS
Imagine.Lab Amesim software from product lifecycle management (PLM) specialist Siemens PLM Software. LMS Amesim was employed to evaluate the torsional vibration response of the driveline to the cylinder pressures. The engineers are pleased with the efficiency, scalability and reliability of the software. “The pre-packaging of components helps a lot
when modelling complex dynamic systems,” says Papotti, “and the modularity of the software allows generating models with a complexity in function of the phenomena the user intends to investigate. Thanks to the availability of detailed dedicated libraries, users
OMNIFY SOFTWARE AND AXONICS MODULATION TECHNOLOGIES
Axonics Modulation Technologies is a medical device company developing an innovative miniaturised rechargeable technology. The Axonics Sacral Neuromodulation System (SNM) is the first CE-marked rechargeable SNM designed to improve the experience of clinicians and patients suffering from Urinary and Fecal dysfunction.
CHALLENGE The team at Axonics had previous experience with product lifecycle management (PLM) at another medical device start-up. One particular area where Axonics saw the greatest benefit of a PLM solution was with electronic sign-offs. With paper-based processes and insufficient signatories, approvals are serial in nature and the absence of a key approver can translate into a major delay. Axonics wanted to prevent this issue with an automated system that offered the ability for Axonics staff to continue the approval process for documents, drawings and training, on or off-site, via remote logins, and allow for the assignment of signatories. Product development compliant to ISO
13485 and the FDA CFR, Axonics wanted a software solution that would facilitate active implantable medical device (AIMD) product development under a quality system compliant to ISO 13485 and the FDA CFR
6 OCTOBER 2017 | DESIGN SOLUTIONS
(Code of Federal Regulations), as well as other regulatory frameworks.
SOLUTION Omnify Empower PLM was selected based on past successes, the ability to meet Axonics’ requirements as a new medical device company, and because a large portion of the team was familiar with it. Omnify offers a flexible and configurable system for medical device companies. Axonics currently utilises the Document Control, Supplier Management, Training Management, Equipment Management, and Bill of Material (BOM) management modules. The company has also configured Omnify Empower to address areas such as: material citations, calibration and preventive maintenance, component characteristics, such as electrical part footprints, supplier part number decoders, and Design History File (DHF) auto- generation. Device master records (DMRs) are also created in a similar but simplified manner as Omnify BOMs, dramatically saving time and effort.
www.omnifysoft.com www.axonicsmodulation.com
can efficiently create models that simulate real- life behaviour. “During the simulation, a few secondary
variables, like the rotational speed of the gearbox shaft, were successfully correlated to measurements, giving us full confidence in the correctness of the model.” Generating a correct model in a fast and easy
way is an important strength of LMS Amesim. The entire simulation model for torsional behaviour of the driveline can be created by ready-to-use components from the powertrain library, in addition to a few components from the mechanical design and signal control libraries. Manzali adds: “Only about 25 per cent of our
time went into the modelling. The remaining 75 per cent was calibration work that includes defining all the parameters. Most of those were acquired by testing. We only sometimes needed data from suppliers and this data could easily be plugged into our LMS Amesim models.” Despite the rather simple model setup, the
LMS Amesim simulation models were able to be used to provide Lamborghini with the necessary insight to solve the noise issues much more effectively than in the traditional way. “All parameters can be analysed during
simulation,” says Papotti. “Batch simulation allows producing graphs for calculated values in function of the different parameters. This ensures fast, easy and detailed insight in the system’s dynamic behaviour. This efficient work flow is a real added value to our process and saves us a lot of time. We can give more precise directions to our suppliers and save a lot of hardware loops. We have really succeeded at evaluating many more possibilities in a shorter time by using LMS Amesim.”
THE TOOL OF THE FUTURE Lamborghini engineers plan to continue using LMS Amesim. Both the model and results have been adopted by the entire Lamborghini research and development (R&D) department. “The true power of LMS Amesim is
demonstrated by how easy it is to evaluate different driving conditions, software or hardware changes and even different configurations; and the speed at which those modified models give us correct results and trends,” concludes Manzali.
Siemens PLM Software
www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en/
/ DESIGNSOLUTIONS
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