Vierhout Engineering's Structural Steel Machine Frame Improvement with Mesh-free Simulation

• Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries

• Equipment & Machinery
• Metals

• Product Research & Development

• Manufacturing Process Simulation
• Virtual Prototyping & Product Testing

Vierhout Engineering (VE), a professional independent engineering services provider, was approached by Universal Corrugated B.V. (UC) to analyze and simulate one of its machines. The machine was incredibly complex, and VE realized that traditional Finite Element Analysis (FEA) might not be sufficient for this project. The traditional FEA process required significant effort and expertise to prepare the models for analysis, especially for geometry simplification and meshing. The machine's complexity meant that each component or system had to be simplified and divided for analysis, a time-consuming process that often reached the hardware limits of the computers used. Large structural frames also had to be analyzed with simplified beams and sheet elements, a cumbersome, error-prone, and time-consuming process.

Universal Corrugated B.V. (UC), part of the Minda Group and based in Almelo, the Netherlands, is a company offering automatic deposit systems for the corrugated cardboard and board industry. UC provides solutions for the dry end of corrugated cardboard plants, including complete systems for the manufacturing of endless corrugated cardboard and stacking systems down-stream of corrugated cardboard converting machines. They approached Vierhout Engineering (VE), a professional independent engineering services provider based in Hengelo, the Netherlands, for support in analyzing and simulating one of their machines.

VE turned to Altair SimSolid, a structural analysis software developed specifically for upfront structural assessment. SimSolid eliminates the need for geometry simplification and meshing, the two most time-consuming and expertise-intensive tasks in traditional FEA. VE used SimSolid to analyze the structural steel machine frame in high detail. The frame, which had a mass of about 20 tons and was approximately 32 meters long, was analyzed with different load cases and detailed framework conditions of contacts and forces. SimSolid allowed VE to analyze the complete 3D detailed model, including bolts and nuts with tightening torques and pre-tensions. Parts with contacts such as flange connections were analyzed geometrically, non-linearly, including friction and separation contacts. The results of these analyses were very detailed and clearly displayed in 3D with material stress, displacements, modal frequencies, and reaction forces on the foundations.

• The use of SimSolid allowed VE to reduce manual work to a minimum, enabling them to focus more on details and custom settings such as contacts, loads, and pre-tensions. The mesh-free simulation method of SimSolid eliminated the meshing phase of the design process, offering more development time to investigate design variants. The analyses were more detailed and could be fully executed on 3D solids. The complex 3D CAD composition detail models (at production level) could be used, including all details such as major welding and bolt-nut connections. VE now applies SimSolid for all complex analyses and simulations, and sees a lot of potential in SimSolid for future customer 3D CAD export projects.

• Improved analysis efficiency
• Performed detailed analysis
• Visualized 3D solids