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Optimizing Smartphone Housing Design: A Case Study of Samsung Research Institute – Bangalore
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
- Other - Battery
Applicable Industries
- Electronics
- Glass
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Digital Twin
- Virtual Reality
Services
- Hardware Design & Engineering Services
- Testing & Certification
The Challenge
Samsung R&D Institute India - Bangalore (SRI-B), the largest R&D centre outside Korea for Samsung Electronics, faced significant challenges in the mobile devices industry. The industry is fiercely competitive, with companies constantly being pushed to innovate their hardware design. The design cycles are becoming shorter, and cost margins are narrowing, leading to a greater emphasis on virtual testing using computer simulation. Traditionally, an analyst would use Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to iterate a design until a feasible solution is reached. However, due to the limitations of manually exploring the complete design space, the acquired solution is not always necessarily an optimal one. One of the critical tests to determine the reliability of a mobile device is the drop test, which often reveals weaknesses in the housing design.
About The Customer
Samsung R&D Institute India - Bangalore (SRI-B) is the largest R&D centre outside Korea for Samsung Electronics. With over 3000 engineers, SRI-B works across diverse domains, projects, products, clients, people, and countries, and conducts research in new and emerging areas of technology. The Mobile division, one of the oldest research and development divisions at SRI-B, is particularly focused on pushing the boundaries of hardware design in the fiercely competitive mobile devices industry.
The Solution
To address these challenges, SRI-B adopted Altair HyperWorks OptiStruct® Software for shape and topology optimization to arrive at a detailed definition of a smartphone front & rear housing. A typical Samsung smartphone was used to demonstrate the optimization approach. The phone has a plastic over molded magnesium die-cast front housing and a polycarbonate rear housing. The lens-display module is adhered to the front housing, while the PCB and the battery are constrained to the rear housing, which is screwed to the front housing. The device is dropped in various orientations and the deformation of the internal components is monitored through simulation. It was observed that the drop reliability of a phone correlates to its stiffness; the higher the stiffness the greater its degree of reliability.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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