Michigan Baja Racing (MBR), a collegiate race team participating in the North American Baja SAE intercollegiate competition, faced a significant challenge in designing a competitive off-road race car. The team had to create a vehicle that was light and nimble enough for acceleration, maneuverability, and hill climb events, but also durable enough to withstand the suspension and traction (S&T) and endurance race. The design process required innovative solutions to reduce mass while maintaining strength, ensuring the vehicle could travel as fast as possible for as long as possible. Adding to the complexity of the challenge, the team had a tight six-month timeline from rulebook to manufactured vehicle, leaving little room for prototyping and testing and no room for critical design mistakes.

Rimac Automobili, a leading developer and manufacturer of electrification systems for global automotive companies, faced a significant challenge in the structural design of the monocoque for the Rimac C-Two, the largest single carbon fiber part in the automotive industry. The main challenge was the material, a lightweight, carbon fiber reinforced with epoxy resin. As this carbon fiber is an orthotropic and brittle material, its representation in a finite element (FE) material card is very difficult. One of the most important parameters in designing EV is weight. The lighter the vehicle, the more increase in vehicle range which can lead to a higher acceptance of EV. Following a lightweight approach in the development process of their concept hypercar C_Two, the Rimac engineers were tasked to design the monocoque as a single carbon fiber part with an unprecedented size.

Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance, a strategic partnership between Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi Motors, was facing a significant challenge in reducing the weight of their vehicles to stay competitive in the automotive industry. The company aimed to decrease the mass on chassis components by combining new, lighter material Alu with topology optimization. However, the traditional simulation methods such as finite element analysis, while helpful in developing lighter and affordable cars, were time-consuming. The company needed a new, easy-to-use simulation tool that would enable non-experts, part-time analysts, and designers to gain insights and accurate results in the early design phases of Renault vehicles chassis projects and projects for production line tooling/conveyors. The challenge was to find a solution that could reduce the lead time on the development of its products, aligning with the corporate initiative “FAST” (Future-Ready At-Scale Transformation).

The challenge faced by MDGo, an Israeli startup, was to develop a system that could automatically alert first responders and hospitals about accidents and provide detailed reports on potential injuries. The goal was to reduce the number of fatalities that occur in the hours and days following a car crash, which research shows could be up to 44 percent of all car crash deaths. The system needed to provide real-time, detailed information about the victim’s injuries to help first responders make informed decisions. However, obtaining the necessary data for such a system was a challenge. Physical crash tests, while useful, were not diverse enough and were defined by regulations. Moreover, conducting a large number of physical crash tests was expensive.

Talaria, a startup founded by students at the Delft University of Technology, is developing new airborne solutions for Personal Air Mobility (PAM). The team is working on an electrically driven PAM that can take-off and land vertically in urban environments. The main challenges faced by the team were weight reduction and speeding up the production process. The weight of all components has a significant impact on flight performance and the flying range. Therefore, Talaria aimed to optimize the hubs of four rotor blades to reduce the overall weight of the device. The challenge was to reduce the weight and number of unique components, while ensuring feasibility and safety in a quicker production process. The chosen manufacturing method was 3D printing, which presented a unique challenge because this is not common practice in the aviation industry for critical components.

The South African aviation manufacturing solutions provider Aerosud and the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) launched a challenging 3D printing project, Aeroswift, in 2011. The project aimed to unlock the potential of the growing additive manufacturing (AM) industry, improve market competitiveness, and provide South Africa with a unique competitive edge in metal AM. The challenge was to build a large metal Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) frame on the Aeroswift printer, while improving the buy-to-fly ratio and reducing development time and waste. The Aeroswift system was capable of printing much larger parts than ever before, and ten times faster than any other commercially available laser melting machine. However, to fully utilize its capabilities, Aeroswift needed a methodology for designing large additively manufactured products.

San Bernardino County School System, which services 40 school districts and supports K-12 schools, community colleges, and occupational programs, was struggling with efficiently integrating data and providing reporting to comply with the Affordable Care Act and other new regulations. The school system was also required to continuously respond to ad hoc information requests. The new payroll reporting requirements further complicated the situation, as the system struggled to integrate the necessary data. Costly payroll system upgrades and time-consuming, manual efforts were not in the budget. The technology department needed to continuously respond to ad hoc requests for information quickly, such as budget impacts of increasing a health benefit, or the number of substitute teachers employed in a given month.

The Western Sydney Solar Team was tasked with designing the most efficient and aerodynamic single-seat solar car possible, while ensuring driver safety and adhering to class rules. The team had a predetermined design of the solar car body shape that was optimized with the primary focus on reducing aerodynamic drag. However, they faced challenges in optimizing the monocoque chassis, bulkhead structure, and motor housing of the car within the existing design. They also had to adhere to strict design load cases set out in the class rules as well as minimum g-force strength requirements to ensure driver safety. Furthermore, they had to design and optimize the roll-hoop to safely accommodate the driver. The team was provided with a geometric model of the car that set out the chassis and structure, but no design existed for the roll-hoop.

Michigan Engineering Services, LLC (MES), a research and development company specializing in commercial software and advanced technology for engineering simulations, was faced with a challenge from automotive companies. These companies needed to control the airborne noise generated within the interior of a vehicle due to external sources such as motors, engines, transmissions, and tires. The goal was to achieve the least amount of noise with minimal penalties in cost and weight. The challenge was that conventional Finite Element Analysis (FEA) methods, used for simulations up to 8KHz to 10KHz (the typical upper frequencies of interest for airborne noise), were either computationally expensive or infeasible due to the small size of finite elements required to model the vehicle at such high frequencies.

Shiva Tool Tech, an automotive manufacturing company based in Pune, India, specializes in designing and manufacturing gravity die casting (GDC), low-pressure die casting (LPDC), and high-pressure die casting (HPDC) Dies. The company supports customers from the manufacturing process design to the production stage. However, the company faced challenges in obtaining a defect-free die design. The casting die designs were developed based on years of experience for components received from their customers in the form of computer-aided design (CAD) and engineering drafts. Once the die for the casting was designed, it was manufactured and assembled at their facility. The die was then sent to the customer for carrying out the physical casting trial. The cast part manufactured from the new dies was sent back to Shiva Tool Tech with an inspection report and defects identified. The die design was then modified to eliminate the defects. This entire process took about 3-4 physical iterations to get a defect-free die design. The company realized the value of simulation software in optimizing this design and manufacturing process to save time and money. However, outsourcing the simulations were expensive and time-consuming.

The case study presents several challenges faced by companies in the field of composite material design and manufacturing. The first challenge is to accurately represent the behavior of composite material and choose the best option from many possibilities. The second challenge is to generate a realistic finite element model of a wound part. The third challenge is to perform a global simulation that includes refined areas at a lower scale. The fourth challenge is to simulate the lay-up manufacturing process of a complex composite part to predict the orientation of its fibers and its fiber volume fraction. The final challenge is to simulate the lay-up manufacturing process of an aeronautic radome, predict the orientation of its fibers, and consider these orientations in predicting the electromagnetic performance.

The BHGE Secondary Flow & Heat Transfer team is tasked with a wide range of analyses in the gas turbine design process. The team's scope includes estimating the secondary air requirements for the entire turbine, providing boundary conditions for the thermomechanical analyses of the engine's main components, and supporting the estimation of the performance of the thermodynamic cycle, among other tasks. A key focus of the thermal design process is on the lifespan and reliability of the components, which are directly linked to controlling local temperature and thermal gradients. Additionally, the team must consider the required amount of cooling mass flow and the back flow margin (BFM), which quantifies the pressure margin to hot gas ingestion through a cooled component wall. The evaluation of the BFM is not deterministic but should be conducted statistically, considering all uncertainties of geometrical and thermo-fluid dynamics boundary conditions. As a result, component failure is evaluated probabilistically, determining the probability of failure.

Dynamic Systems Analysis Ltd. (DSA) has been providing custom software solutions for the ocean engineering industry for over a decade. Their ProteusDS and ShipMo3D simulation software tests virtual prototypes of vessels and equipment operating in ocean conditions. Seaflex AB, the maker of the Seaflex mooring system, needed to understand the dynamic effects of ocean current, wind, and waves on their mooring system. This understanding is crucial to reduce the risk and uncertainty of vessel motions and loads on equipment in an ocean environment, leading to safer designs and lower risk and project cost. The Seaflex mooring system is an engineered mooring system that is custom made for each particular location based on the expected forces and conditions. The challenge was to estimate the effect of current, wind, and waves on the mooring system and to numerically model the response of the Seaflex mooring system to various conditions.

PSA Peugeot Citroën, the second largest carmaker in Europe, faced a significant challenge in meeting increasingly stringent automotive regulations that demanded lower CO2 emission levels. This required the carmaker to decrease the design structure mass by using materials with a higher strength-to-weight ratio. However, introducing new materials into the design process was complex; design rules and numerical tools had to evolve to understand the characteristics of these materials and evaluate potential failures. There was a risk of delaying production awaiting reliable design direction from simulation, or having to redesign a part late in the design cycle. Furthermore, due to the large, nonlinear deformations involved in simulating crash or rupture events, proper material failure criteria were essential to results accuracy. To improve its knowledge in assessing predictive rupture models, and to identify a viable solution for testing ruptures on a massive scale, PSA collaborated with Altair, Ecole Polytechnique Laboratoire de Mécanique des Solides (LMS) and PRACE.

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has mandated modern transit bus systems to provide more efficient services across America. Currently, U.S. public bus transit authorities are heavily subsidized to meet operating budgets, with State and local subsidies exceeding $19 billion per year and Federal subsidies exceeding $7 billion per year. The challenge was to design and manufacture a new bus with improved fuel economy, lower emissions, and a lower life cycle cost than the existing buses. The goal of the BUSolutions project was to meet these requirements and provide a sustainable solution for the future of public transit.

Cleveland Golf, a leading golf club manufacturer, faced the challenge of meeting changing regulations for golf club design while consistently introducing new products that are precisely engineered for shape, feel, balance, sound, and performance. The United States Golf Association (USGA) imposes limitations on golf club heads, including the size of the grooves in wedges and irons, the dimensions of the head, and the permitted coefficient of restitution (COR) – or springiness – that is allowed in clubs. As clubs have improved, they've reached these limits and have the capability to go beyond them. This posed a significant challenge as Cleveland Golf needed to figure out how to continue to improve clubs without exceeding these limits. Additionally, the USGA recently changed the rules specifying groove size, impacting how future clubs will be designed. From an economic standpoint, consumers were not buying as many clubs as they did in the past, so Cleveland Golf needed to create more new and innovative products, not just variations on existing clubs.

NACCO Materials Handling Group (NMHG), a leading producer of lift trucks, was facing a significant challenge in their product development process. The company had been using finite-element analysis (FEA) for 25 years, but this required the construction of several iterations of physical prototypes to test their designs. This process was not only costly but also time-consuming, leading to delays in bringing products to market. The company was in dire need of a solution that could reduce the time to market without compromising on the quality of their products. The ultimate goal was to virtually design, test, and evaluate each product before any physical prototypes were made, thereby saving costs and gaining a competitive advantage.

Tesla Motors, a high-profile electric car manufacturer, was seeking ways to optimize its development cycle to expedite the production of high-quality vehicles. A significant challenge was the time-consuming process of preparing the finite element analysis (FEA) model, particularly the connector portion of its CAE model. The Model S sedan, for instance, had over 300 different fixings and more than 6,000 weld points, including welds, bolts, rivets, adhesives, and MIG welds. The most laborious task was recreating these connectors in the CAD model, which could take up to several days. This process was not only inefficient but also prone to errors, as there was a risk of overlooking a MIG weld or adhesive due to the lack of detail in the CAD file about the type of connector used, its mechanical properties, and the panels it was connecting.

In 2008, PWO Germany was tasked with the development and production of a new steel automotive cross car beam (CCB) for the dashboard of a new car. The challenge was to develop this component based on the CAD model, design space definition, and other pre-defined standards provided by the customer. The component had to meet various specifications related to modal analyses and dynamic loads, which were determined by the expected use of the component. For instance, the eigenfrequency of the cross car beam, when connected to the steering wheel, could not exceed a certain preset value to avoid undesirable vibrations within the vehicle at certain speeds. Other specifications were related to crash and vehicle safety. The challenge was to meet these often conflicting specifications while developing the component in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Assa Ashuach Studio, a London-based industrial research and product design consultancy, was faced with the challenge of designing a stool that was both light and economical. The stool needed to be customised to support a weight of 120 kg. The challenge was to determine how much material could be removed from the design space while still supporting this weight and achieving a unique design. The design and manufacturing process had to be efficient, reducing material waste and cost, without compromising on the quality of the product. The studio was also interested in exploring new design and production methods to achieve unique forms and aesthetic qualities.

The Hydraulic Systems Division of Eaton’s Aerospace Group, based in Jackson, Mississippi, is responsible for designing hydraulic components and systems for many of the world’s military and commercial aircraft. The division conducts virtual testing of many of its designs, including stress analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and dynamic simulation for hydraulic pumps, actuators, motors, and related components. However, the division faced a significant challenge in improving efficiency in meshing. Before 2002, the Analysis Group used a process built into a solver for use on finite-element models. This process was not designed for finite-element analysis and often failed to provide the quality mesh needed when dealing with complex hydraulic components. Meshing complex hydraulic component geometry required a great deal of effort and time, making the process inefficient and cumbersome.

The Durham University Electric Motorsport (DUEM) team, a group of undergraduate and postgraduate students, were faced with the challenge of reducing the weight and improving the performance of their Formula Student vehicle. The team participates in the highly competitive Formula Student competition, hosted annually by the Institute of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE) at the Silverstone Formula 1 track in the UK. The competition requires teams to demonstrate their technical, engineering, design, and manufacturing skills, reflecting the changes and demands of the industry while considering new developments in commercial car racing. The DUEM team aimed to apply the latest weight-saving technology to achieve a faster, more efficient car by optimizing an upright design for multiple load cases. The optimization of the upright design was a complex challenge, requiring design for multiple load cases including bump, cornering, braking, and acceleration loads. The conventional means of design iteration for many load cases by removing areas of low stress at each iteration was time-consuming and the final solution was not necessarily the most structurally efficient.

PSA Peugeot Citroën, a world-class automobile manufacturer, was facing a significant challenge in the development of engine components, specifically the exhaust manifold. The design of the exhaust manifold is crucial for the optimal performance of combustion engines, and it has to withstand harsh operational conditions. PSA conducts complex thermo mechanical calculations to determine the lifetime of the exhaust manifold. From these calculations, design changes are derived and proposed to the supplier of the component. However, the supplier often found it difficult to correctly interpret the design improvements suggested by the PSA CAE engineers. Furthermore, a full evaluation cycle of such a design change took about three weeks, with no guarantee that it represented the final design status after that time. This led to the situation where only a few design changes and evaluations were possible within the given development timeframe, making the design of the manifold a critical task in the engine development. PSA needed to change the overall development workflow to be faster and to be able to evaluate more design variants in the same time.

The Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA) faced a significant challenge in the concept and preliminary design phases of a naval ship project. The designers were often required to work with limited data on the major structural design drivers for the vessel. This often led to a largely subjective design approach, which could result in inefficiency and even structural problems being locked-in from the start. To rectify any issues, increased material use, weight, and unnecessary complexity, as well as high design and manufacture costs, could be introduced to the end product. The ACA sought to evaluate the potential of simulation-driven design under the unique requirements of naval ship design.

ÖBB Rail Cargo Group (ÖBB RCG), the freight transport sector of the Austrian Federal Railways, was faced with the challenge of staying competitive in the complex logistics industry. The demand for freight wagons was strong, and meeting customers' needs was a top priority. The company needed to invest in a modern fleet of wagons and locomotives. The trend towards lighter and more flexible wagons led ÖBB RCG to aim for a new, lighter, and more flexible wagon system. The design principles they wanted to adhere to were weight optimization, standardization, and modularization in production and maintenance, and the use of high-strength construction steel. To realize this project, ÖBB RCG collaborated with two major partners – voestalpine, a globally leading technology and capital goods group, and PJM, a provider of railway systems solutions.

CIKONI, an innovation-focused engineering company based in Stuttgart, Germany, was faced with the challenge of creating an integrated digital design workflow for Type IV composite pressure vessels (CPVs). The company aimed to develop a comprehensive digital design process and workflow for CPVs, particularly the state-of-the-art Type IV polymer-lined, carbon fiber overwrapped vessels used in vehicles, and reduce the need for extensive, expensive physical testing. The challenges identified with the design of composite pressure vessels were three-fold: complex material behavior, many constituents, and the need for fast results. For accurate simulation, filament winding paths, material anisotropy and nonlinear damage progression needed full consideration. Additionally, expensive testing for each material and process modification was required. Lastly, simple modeling and efficient computation were needed to reduce simulation cost.

The Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) was tasked with establishing Indian railways as a genuine supplier of Diesel locomotives for the South Asian and African market. The challenge was to develop a diesel locomotive that met performance, reliability, fuel economy, crashworthiness, and operator comfort demands. The locomotives needed to operate economically and safely for decades under harsh conditions with minimal downtime. Durability of components undergoing repeated fatigue cycles was a major concern, with most units logging more than 1 million miles during the first six years of operation and having a useful life of nearly 30 years. Some major components were expected to last more than 50 years in the used equipment market. Achieving these goals while shortening the development cycle was particularly challenging due to the significant time and cost factors associated with running physical tests on such large, complex machines. RDSO had been using simulation tools since 1990, but the time for pre-processing was too high due to limitations of computing machine and software.

Bental Motion Systems, a member of the Gevasol Group, has been designing and manufacturing advanced power and motion systems for demanding industries such as defense, aerospace, and semiconductors since 1983. The company produces a variety of end applications including motors, alternators, and electrical brakes. To meet increasing demands, Bental continues to advance its in-house capabilities in development, analysis and design, testing, and quality assurance. However, the company faced a challenge in accelerating the design of electric machines while reacting quickly to customer-specific requirements. The R&D team needed to extend its usage of the Altair software suite to cover more physics and gain flexibility in their approach depending on the project phase.

Crimson Racing, the University of Alabama’s Formula SAE team, has been participating in Formula SAE events across the United States for nearly two decades. Despite their long history, the team's most successful years have been the past five, thanks to a focus on understanding and justifying every component of their race cars. The team had made significant advancements, reducing the vehicle weight by nearly 200 pounds and advancing from a perennial 90th place to a Top 20 team in 2017. However, they set an ambitious goal to place in the top 10 at FSAE Michigan, which would require beating many of the best teams in the world. To achieve this, they decided to add a front and rear wing to their vehicle. This change, while significant for aerodynamics, also affected the structures of the vehicle, increasing loading, raising the center of gravity, and increasing the drag force which the powertrain system must overcome. The suspension team had to revalidate every load-bearing suspension component to ensure adequate strength and stiffness requirements would be met, a complex task when analyzing parts moving in three-dimensions.

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.