TRIPLE EIGHT RACE ENGINEERING (UK)
Graham Lawrence, Design Engineer
"Benefits of MSC MD Nastran in the Design of the BTCC Vauxhall Vectra"

Introduce 888 and its previous use of Patran with hardware and software setup. Discuss advantages of MD Nastran and new setup of tokens and dedicated machine to send analysis to. Include working examples for both and go on to talk about future aims with MD Nastran.

Mr. Lawrence's design engineering responsibilities are to scheme, design and optimise components for Vauxhall's British touring car within the FIA S2000 regulations. Main projects have included current Engine installation and previous race cars rear suspension design. His race engineering responsibilities are to work with the driver and mechanics to optimise car setup to the circuit and conditions throughout the race season and to develop the cars base setup during testing. Triple Eight Race Engineering is a successful motor sport company primarily in the British Touring Car Championship. Since 2001 in the BTCC 888 have won 6 Driver championships, 7 Manufacturer championships and 5 Teams championships.

Despite of considerable research in the field of reciprocating rubbery seals in the past, the day by day design process of such seals still appear to be mainly a process of experimental trial and error, requiring a lot of skill and experience of the designer. It is the main aim of the present paper to contribute to the development of adequate numerical models for leakage and friction, which provide a helpful tool in the designing process of fluid power components. This aim involves the modelling of the tribological processes in the seal contact as well as the proper modelling of the pneumatic cylinder as a whole. Attention is confined to the seal in various loading conditions. Seal friction may possess uncertain properties due to the interference of various factors, and it causes random oscillations or stick slip when the piston velocity remains under a critical value. A deeper understanding of the friction force characteristic is required for avoiding this oscillation phenomenon. For low-speed driving of pneumatic cylinders the trade off between driving force generated by air pressure and sealing friction is considered to determine potentially unwanted stick-slip motion. This paper focuses on a new friction law which seems to be more suitable than traditional ones because the proposed constitutive equation shows a rate dependency on a frictional state variable which enables on after-effects of actual friction force like hystereses and variations in breakaway friction force. These modelling in done by using appropriate user subroutines available in the frame of MSC.MARC software.

Dr. Manfred Achenbach is manager of technical and analytical service / FEA at Parker Hannifin GmbH. He has completed studies in mechanical engineering and physics with focus on numerical analysis and material science. He was then in the position of a research and development engineer at MAN Technology. He is currently responsible for computer simulation and analytical service at Parker Hannifin GmbH, Packing Division, Europe in the field of seals.

Casting exhaust pipes are being nowadays replaced by stainless steel bent tubes. Some of these tubes are manufactured by electric resistance welding processes and afterwards bent successively to obtain the final geometry of the exhaust pipes. This type of tubes has been analyzed during the present work. Two stainless steels have been studied, with and without an annealing treatment, and characterized to obtain the material mechanical behaviour and its springback. The springback is an inevitable phenomenon when a load is released and it is mainly due to the elastic property of the material. To successfully implement the springback behaviour in a thin walled tube bending simulation implies accurately predicting the final tube shape, since the bending angle decreases as the dies are released. Springback has been taken into account using a material subroutine to set the Young modulus as a function of the plastic strain. Besides, different locations of the seam weld can cause rejections in the production line. To analyze the seam weld influence on the tube behaviour an experimental setup has been designed to bend tubes and study deformations, bending radii, tube thickness and springback. These tests have been used to establish a correlation with the simulations. Finally, exhaust pipe tubes have been simulated with the two different materials and the knowledge obtained from the previous tasks, and compared to the real geometry obtained during the bending process.

Javier Romo is a Mechanical Engineer, since 1996 has developed his carreer in Cidaut Foundation. In the last decade he has been a Research Project Manager working in projects related to aluminium, welding and electric and hybrid vehicles.

JSC "MIC" Mashinostroyenia (Russia)
Anton Shlyapnikov, Head of Section
"Test Result Analysis of Payload Fairing Sections Disclosure with Application of MSC Nastran and Specialized Software Tool Developed by JSC "MIC" Mashinostroyenia"

A disclosure of payload fairing sections - is rather dynamic stage of insertion of spacecraft onto orbit. If disclosure devices will not perform properly it is not possible to guarantee a success of space launch. Because of that an optimization of payload fairing sections disclosure devices design is very important. JSC "MIC "Mashinostroyenia" used MSC Nastran in common with author's specialized software tool developed by JSC "MIC "Mashinostroyenia" for simulation of disclosure payload fairing sections process of space rocket "Strela" and for analysis of results of corresponding tests. The experiment revealed that the firing sections are subjected by a non-symmetrical acting from the disclosure devices. This impact leads to arising of transverse acceleration of payload comparable to the magnitude of overall level of spacecraft acceleration. To identify the causes of transverse perturbations of spacecraft, which is symmetrical, a physical experiment with payload fairing sections disclosure was simulated in computer environment by MSC Nastran. It is important that the conditions of physical test were reproduced in computer simulation. By the simulation of payload fairing sections disclosure it was revealed that the disclosure devices have not the same parameters and they activated non-synchronously. On the basis of the random processes theory, the sensitivity theory and MSC Nastran simulation results mathematical theory and specialized software tool, which allowed to define conditions of payload fairing sections disclosure and loads acting on space vehicle and space rocket with specified precision, were developed. Comparative result of test and simulations are represented in this report.

Anton Shlyapnikov is the Chief of dynamic calculations at JSC "MIC" Mashinostroeniya" in Russia.

VKM-ENGINEERING (Russia)
Nikolay Zhuravlev, Chief Officer
"Application of a Virtual Product Development Technology in a Railway Engineering Company"

"Russian railways" founded in the 19th century is one of the oldest transport systems in the world. Nowadays many companies develop and produce railway cars, locomotives and trains for Russian market that's why every new railway maker encounters a hard way to success. The only way to reach it is using new technologies and methods for development of top-of-the-line constructions. In 2004 VKM encountered a problem with development of new generation railway cars because old methods were not considered. To solve these problems it was necessary to make changes in development process. MSC VPD technologies were chosen as a base for creation of a high level system for modeling and analysis of freight cars and bogies. In the course of development of a first pilot project based on a new technology (development of railway automotive carrier), MSC technologies were integrated into work environment and business management of company. Stress-strain, frequency and stability analysis of carriers were made by Patran-Sofy-MSC Nastran-Marc with detailed modeling using spot welding. Adams and Dytran were used for dynamic and crash analysis. As a result, new freight car was created with the best characteristics in the market and the shortest time-to-market. To conclude it is necessary to add that results of using of MSC VPD systems in the company on the base of a 4-year experience are represented by several most successful projects. Alongside with above-mentioned information, evaluation of technical efficiency and cost efficiency of MSC VPD systems is an obvious fact.

Mr. Zhuravlev received his M.Sc. from Moscow State University of Railway Engineering Post-graduate educational. The theme of his dissertation was "Protect railway transport under crash collision" (high-speed nonlinear process). His undergraduate degree was for electrical-mechanical engineer of transport. He is the chief officer of technical analysis division at JSC "VKM-Engineering" in Moscow (www.ruzhim.ru) and has been at VKM since 2004. Previously he was the lead engineer of the bogie design center. His accomplishments include iImplementation of VPD systems and enterprise analysis systems; development of new methodologies of component design, design and technology processes; computer simulation of component and assembles (stress-strain analysis with taking in account nonlinear effects, calculation of static stiffness, conducting of frequency response analysis, multi-body system simulation, fatigue analysis, etc.); and scientific researches, tests, project management.

Battery box in Metro Car is responsible for supplying current for a short time in case of failure of contact line. It has to fulfill requirements from standard EN 61373 which include shock and vibration test. These tests are very time and money consuming therefore MSC.Software programs including Patran, Marc and MSC Nastran were used to support design process and shorten delivery-to-market time. Main difficulty in model was according to contact between tray with batteries and enclosure. Also batteries were an object of additional test including modal analysis due to their influence on mass and stiffness of battery box. For shock analysis Marc has shown its great capabilities in analyzing contact. Vibration test was more complex to analyze as there was need to perform different types of analysis including calculating of normal modes, frequency response with random response. Last step was to estimate fatigue life due to vibration based on Three-Band Technique using Miner's Cumulative Damage Ratio.

Grzegorz Brozek has received M.Sc. in Automation and Metrology from AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow at 2002 and and B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Hogeschool van Utrecht at 2002. Since that time he is an employee of EC Engineering (previously Energocontrol) where he works as an CAE Expert. Main fields of his activity are: static and dynamic analysis of parts and vehicles for mostly rail and consumer industry. He is also writing his PhD thesis on field of use of nonlinear finite element method in design process focusing on energy absorbing using phenomena of metal machining and crush of composites.

Daimler Trucks is the world's leading truck manufacturer with the brands Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star and Mitsubishi Fuso. The product range covers light, medium and heavy trucks for local and long-distance deliveries and construction sites, as well as special vehicles and buses. The outstanding reputation of these products is based, among others, on the excellent quality of the engines. Heavy and medium duty engines designed as inline engines as well as v-engines are provided for on and off highway applications. For the fast and effective development of these engines different advanced CAE-methods are used in an intense way. The required detailed analysis of engine dynamics is performed using hybrid ADAMS-models with flexible parts using the so called FEM-MBS-FATIGUE-method. Two of the latest approaches within this method are discussed more detailed and the resulting benefits for the efficiency as well as for the quality are shown. At first, a new approach of modelling one side elasto-hydrodynamic coupling for the interaction of crank train and crank case in ADAMS is presented. This method was optimised with respect to simulation time and required accuracy and is developed together with our partner Steinbatz Engineering. The approach has also the potential to be used in future for other applications. Second, the presentation deals with some of the new features of MD NASTRAN and how these are used to simplify and accelerate the simulation process chain for engine dynamics. Pretension of bolts for fatigue analysis as well as assemblies of crank cases will be discussed.

Since 2005 Mr. Steinbatz is working as a professor for product development at the Upper Austrian University of applied sciences campus Wels. He is focused on virtual and rapid prototyping for teaching, research and development and the development of the study courses. Due to his career at MAGNA Steyr at the Engineering Center Steyr as a simulation expert for dynamics, durability and acoustics he continues to push the limits of existing software tools for the demanding needs of modern product development (VPD). The research and development work is focused on elastic multi body simulation with consideration of non-linear effects, virtual load data acquisition, virtual testing (iteration) and developing new methods for journal bearing simulation. Mr. Steinbatz holds a Dipl.-Ing. and Dr. degree in technical physics from the Johannes Kepler University in Linz. The focus of his diploma and doctor thesis was on experimental physics, especially atomic and surface science.

This presentation describes lossy data compression of NASTRAN-OP2 files as they emerge from NVH simulations. The largest part of these files contains real or complex eigenmodes but also element energies and stress or strain tables. During the automotive design process a amount of data has to be stored. Using data compression the size of the files can be significantly reduced with less storage space required. The reduction in file size resulting from the compression also leads consequently to faster file transfer and I/O-times of post processing tools. Therefore, efficient compression of OP2-files means a large benefit for NASTRAN users. To achieve very high compression ratios a lossy data compression scheme was chosen. During compression floating point data is quantized using a user controlled precision. To achieve the best compression ratio at a given precision the entropy of the data is reduced further by using specially designed prediction algorithms. The technologies involved exploit the shell and solid element connectivity information derived from the OP2 files. To accomplish seamless workflow integration the compressed data must be fast and easily accessible. Therefore the HDF5 format was chosen as output file format. The advantages of the HDF5 file format will be exploited during decompression. Easy and fast data access facilitates the parallelization of the decompression using OpenMP. The software femzip-N which makes use of all these features showed very satisfying compression results on NVH simulations conducted by Audi AG and Volkswagen AG. Compression ratios between 5.0 and 40.0 have been achieved.

Mr. Lidzba is from Munster, Germany. There he finished school in 1998. After a year of civil service he started to study mathematics and computer sciences in early 2000 at the "Westfalische Wilhelms Universitat Munster" and tranfered to the University of Cologne in 2004. There he graduated with a diploma degree in applied mathematics in 2007. His work as a student employee at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms an Scientific Computing (SCAI) lead him into the field of data compression, which was also the concern of his diploma thesis. Since his graduation Mr. Lidzba is working at SCAI as a scientist on the developement of the compression software Femzip-N, a tool to compress Nastran OP2 result files.

The paradigm shift in automotive industry from hardware based developments to development processes by virtual prototypes requires new approaches for data management and simulation procedures. Major difficulties are generally not the availability of complex simulation methods. It is required to apply the most effective simulation, considering the development stage of the product and the availability of data. Due to the reduction of hardware prototypes, vibration analysis of engine components becomes a critical issue. Engine vibrations are not a component property but a system property. Due to the broad band excitation, resonant vibrations can generally not be avoided under all operating conditions. Therefore, the vibration analysis for a assembly of parts has to be performed, and the fatigue of the components under investigation has to be predicted for typical customer lifetime drive cycles.

This paper/presentation shows the development and industry application of a simulation method for the assessment of vibration fatigue. The method is adjusted to the requirements of the different development stages. Starting with very simple analyses at the concept phase, the model and available data can be extended until the simulation of a fully functional virtual prototype.

Stefan Kaindl is an analysis engineer currently working for dTech Steyr. As a graduate of mechatronics and microsystems, he is currently in charge of the company's office in Vienna. He conducts and coordinates simulation projects for customers in different industries (e.g., automotive and aerospace industry, mechanical and plant engineering). One focus of his work is the computation of dynamic procedures and their effects on life endurance characteristics.

TBC

When upscaling wind turbines one of the issues to be solved is the design of lighter but stiffer and stronger structural components. This work shows some of the efforts carried out at CENER in order to improve the design of structural components which include adhesive joints carrying loads, such as wind turbine blades. Since traditional finite element computations are extremely element size dependent when working in local effects, Fracture Mechanics techniques appear as an initial solution to solve these problems. Therefore an in-house application code based on VCCT (Virtual Crack Closure Technique) which interfaces with MSC.Patran and MSC.Nastran has been developed and compared with a Cohesive Elements based approach included in MSC.Marc. Two examples are described in the presentation. The first example focuses in the validation of the in-house code by a metallic-composite subcomponent test performed at CENER facilities in Sangüesa. The second one considers an I-Beam representative of a WTG blade spar cap and web substructure, with uni- and bi-directional reinforcements joined by adhesive bonding lines. Simulation results from the in-house application (VCCT) and cohesive elements approach are compared with experimental data stemming from tests performed within the FP6-Upwind project, where CENER is an active member. The results obtained with this work are very promising and show that Fracture Mechanics techniques constitute a valid approach for the design of components with adhesive joints from an industrial application point of view.

Mr. Amezqueta has been working in the wind industry for the last two and a half years in the structural mechanics group from the wind energy department at the Spanish renewable energy centre (CENER) in Pamplona. He has completed studies in mechanical engineering at the Navarra’s public university (UPNA), carrying out his Master Thesis in the research department of the german company Andritz Kusters GmbH. He is currently involved in design and calculation tasks of windmill blades as well as test equipment for the testing facilities of CENER. His research is focused on Fracture Mechanics applied to composites and adhesives.

Sauer-Danfoss is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and sale of engineered hydraulic, electric and electronic systems and components. These world-class technologies serve a range of different market segments such as agriculture, construction, material handling, road building, turf care and specialty equipment. This paper presents the development of a vehicle simulation library to model the customer's machines upon which Sauer-Danfoss's components are used for operator control. This enables the Sauer-Danfoss engineers to rapidly propose feasible solution alternatives to the customer. Furthermore, it enables the engineers to optimize the performance of the proposed solutions, saving some of the costly prototype development.

The author holds a Masters degree in Electro-Mechanical Systems Design (Mechatronics) from the University in Aalborg, Denmark. Main focus of the education is on analysis, design and control of hydraulic actuated systems. An internship at one of the major agriculture OEM's and prior hands-on experience with off-road vehicles all contributed in obtaining his current position as Systems and Application Engineer at Sauer-Danfoss. Since the summer of 2007 Jens Bay Madsen has been member of the Systems and Application Engineering team focusing on developing unique electric and hydraulic solutions for the off-road market. Meanwhile Jens Bay Madsen has been one of the leading people in the development of a Adams plugin dedicated for building off-road vehicles. Today Jens Bay Madsen is leading the development and deployment of MSC.Adams in Sauer-Danfoss.

The route to the product is often more important to performance than the product itself. Nowhere it is more apparent then in a shaped product that requires multiple forming steps to achieve the desired final geometry. By choosing the right production route the performance of the same product can be improved. Our RD&T foodcan example is shown with a target to reduce the initial blank diameter from 179 to 172mm. Re-designing of toolsets in the past required a lot of experience and intuition. With the help of FEA it is possible to calculate and visualise the full DRD process, and compare numerous designs at low cost. For packaging applications the forming, loading, and boundary conditions and the requirements for the final product may be demanding. Typical starting gauges for steel packaging products are 0.18-0.26mm. For such a thin material the risk of wrinkling is high. During deep drawing the material is heavily bent and stretched over a small die radius of 1.4-0.48mm with a high risk of thinning and tearing. The multi-stage process takes advantage of the high formability of the material in the stress state of deep drawing. After draw-double redraw engineering strains in the top wall may reach 100%. The process must be robust for multiple die presses at 40-200 strokes per minute. With the help of an accurate analytical description of cylindrical cup drawing it is possible to evaluate anisotropic material properties as well as certain shortcomings of yield criteria and shell element formulations in FE simulations.

After finishing his Ph.D. in biomechanics in the UK in 2002, Mr. Nagy has moved to the Netherlands to work for the steel company, Corus. He is involved in research related to the forming technology and performance of packaging steels for products like aerosols, food, beer&beverage, paint cans, and batteries. Besides cost saving for high volume production by downgauging and optimisation of tooling and product geometry he focuses on advanced material testing and modelling aiming for improved manufacture and product performance of packaging steels.

MSC Software Business Unit The presentation will showcase a coupling development by Esteq Engineering between Easy5, Adams and EDEM (from DEM- Solutions) that enables the analyst to simulate interaction between discreet particles and dynamic geometry controlled by Adams and Easy5. This coupling enables users in the material handling field to get realistic material interaction forces onto their structures.

Paul Naude started his career as a Civil Engineer at a national railway company where he worked for 6 years being involved in the maintenance of railway track. His interest in structure dynamics prompted him to study further to obtain his Masters degree in Mechanical engineering. During this time his first exposure to MSC products was with Adams and soon after moved to a consulting firm where he stayed another 6 years in the simulation department, working with most of the MSC products namely Patran, Nastran, Dytran, Marc Mentat, Adams View, ATV and Car. He recently joined Esteq, the South African Reseller of MSC products, as technical manager, overseeing technical support, training, knowledge transfer services, software developments and the rollout of SimXpert & MD Nastran at key customers.

In the current economic crisis affordability is one of the key issues for design engineers. Understanding the impact of critical cost elements on desired design features is becoming vital.

Several enabling techniques have been developed over the years. These include:
- Design performance and design improvement models like parametric modeling concepts e.g. based on "FE techniques" or "Computer Algebra"
- Both, commercial or in-house cost estimating tools Some of these tools and methods will be reviewed and illustrated by examples. As approximately 70% of "Life Cycle Cost" are committed in Conceptual Design "Design-To-Cost" estimates offer the opportunity to achieve target cost while still satisfying functional requirements.

This means "Cost" need to be included as another independent Design Variable as early as possible in the Design Improvement and Optimization Process besides the "Classical Ones" like displacements, stresses, or eigenfrequencies etc.

Dr. Hans Sippel received his Dipl.-Ing. in Mechanical Engineering from Technical University Munich. At BMW Munich, he worked in Simulation & Design of Motor Engines. He received his PhD in Structural Mechanics from the University of Erlangen. At MSC Software Munich and Los Angeles, he worked among others as Director of European Technical Services. He has several publications about the usage of CAE tools. He's served as Manager of 10 European funded projects. Since early 2003 he has been the General Manager & Owner of CAEvolution GmbH.