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Alstom, a world leader in integrated railway systems, was faced with the challenge of optimizing an existing component design to be manufactured with casting or alternatively with additive manufacturing technologies. The component in question was a part used in Alstom's Metropolis units in the train bogies to support the anti-roll system. The initial design of the part was found to be much too strong for the workloads it was subjected to, and the safety factor was also a little too high. Alstom's engineers were tasked with improving the design of this existing cast part, with a specific focus on optimizing it for production with metal additive manufacturing. The challenge was to improve the overall design while optimizing material usage, and to explore new production options with additive manufacturing.

The National Composites Centre (NCC), a non-profit UK facility, was tasked with the development of an advanced technology demonstrator, a Sit-ski, using composite materials. The Sit-ski, a device used for sports on mountain slopes by individuals with lower extremity limitations, required a design that would showcase the Centre's capabilities while also delivering performance improvements for the skiers. The challenge was to understand the performance of existing Sit-skis, build kinematic models of the suspension behavior, and design a system that would be lighter and more efficient. The design process needed to consider the use of composite structures at an architecture/system level, and the importance of cost and manufacturability in the product development process.

The International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT), a division of the National Automotive Testing and Research Infrastructure Project (NATRIP) Implementation Society (NATIS), is a leading automotive testing and R&D center in North India. ICAT's mission is to integrate advanced automotive technology to support the industry in component development for new classes of vehicles and develop cutting-edge technical expertise to expand upon an impeccable range of automotive services. However, the team faced significant challenges in achieving this mission. Previously, they conducted physical testing of automotive products, a method that risked losing both time and money if the product failed the test. Additionally, the team had to perform complex calculations to solve issues and arrive at accurate designs of products. These issues posed daunting challenges to the team and often turned into time-consuming tasks. To develop ICAT into a Centre of Excellence in component development for the automotive industry, the team needed efficient and validated CAE software tools that would enable them to find appropriate and quick solutions to real-world problems.

The Ryerson’s International Hyperloop Team (RIHT) was faced with the challenge of designing a deployable wheel subsystem, similar to aircraft landing gear, for a Hyperloop Pod that could easily move at speeds under 100mph. The Hyperloop Design Competition, introduced by Elon Musk of SpaceX, was the platform where this challenge was presented. The RIHT, led by Graeme Klim, a Masters Student at Ryerson University, decided to focus on a low speed and emergency subsystem that is similar to an aircraft’s landing gear, which they named the Hyperloop Deployable Wheel System. The team had to submit their design concept to the competition’s first elimination round, which had thousands of entries. After surviving the elimination rounds, the team was invited to the Hyperloop Design Weekend in January of 2016, where they won the Subsystem Innovation Award for their wheel system.

Daimler, a German automotive technology leader, faced a challenge in optimizing the layout of FM, DAB, RKE & TV-antennas in multilayer windscreens. The integration of antennas in windscreens has become popular due to enhanced aesthetics and increased antenna surface area, which enables improved reception. However, the design of such antennas is complex, requiring the ability to analyze electromagnetic interactions between thinly layered dielectrics, thin embedded wires, and the surrounding vehicle body. The vehicle body forms part of the antenna in the frequency range of FM-, DAB- RKEand TV-antennas, leading to the need for the glass antennas to be adapted or redesigned for each car line and variant. Different glass types and configurations can change the impedances of the multiport antennas. Additionally, different antenna concepts are needed for different vehicle types.

Ankers, a company that provides simulation, design, and development services for automotive OEMs and tier one suppliers, was faced with the challenge of determining the thermal influence of brake disks and brake pads on the braking distance of a vehicle. The frictional heat generated by brakes when decelerating a vehicle can have various negative effects on the brake system, including thermal cracks in the brake disks, premature wear or brake failure, and an increased braking distance due to changing friction coefficients at higher temperatures. The goal was to optimize system behavior by understanding and mitigating these effects. The challenge was to show that simulation results would be more accurate when considering the thermal effects via co-simulation and to demonstrate the company's co-simulation competences to its existing and future automotive customers.

Wilson Sporting Goods Co., a leading manufacturer of high-performance sports equipment, was faced with the challenge of supporting contestants in a golf driver design television show, Driver vs. Driver. The show aimed to encourage innovation in the golf industry by having aspiring golf club designers compete to develop a winning design that would ultimately be produced as Wilson’s next driver. The challenge was to provide the contestants with the necessary tools and expertise to bring their designs to life, while ensuring that the designs were technically sound and met the high expectations of consumers in terms of look, feel, and performance. The increasing competition in the sporting industry and the growing demand for faster, lighter, and stronger equipment added to the complexity of the challenge.

PaceControls, a leading technology developer and manufacturer of IoT solutions for the HVACR industry, faced a significant challenge in controlling HVACR equipment. The HVACR systems come in various configurations and sizes, ranging from single compressor/single fan to multi compressor/multi fan units. The technology developed by PaceControls had to be flexible enough to accommodate 10 major HVACR configurations, each with over 200 individual requirements. The challenges included managing requirements and algorithmic complexity, ease of installation and use, accurate estimation of savings, and more. The technology also needed to support Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and 4G LTE communications, and over the air (OTA) firmware update capability.

National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), an electric vehicle and technology developer, was facing a challenge in accurately simulating and eliminating squeak and rattle noise in the interior of their electric passenger cars. These noises, created when two parts come into contact or are displaced relative to each other, can lead to a perception of poor quality among vehicle occupants. The traditional process of building a prototype, testing material interaction, and correcting problems as they occur was proving to be lengthy and expensive. The company was eager to better understand and predict these phenomena to reduce interior noise and improve ride quality. However, the Interior Simulation Team had not yet used simulation strategies to predict and address squeak and rattle issues.

The Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM) in Mexico was faced with the challenge of designing low-cost, lightweight antennas for TV and automotive applications. The goal was to make modern day communications, including TV and GPS, more affordable for the masses, particularly in developing countries. The challenge was particularly significant in the context of TV reception, where the successful transmission of signals to remote areas, especially indoors, was often problematic. The traditional solution, a Yagi array antenna, provided a directed beam towards the TV tower, but the team at UAEM sought to develop an antenna that was smaller, lighter, and improved signal stability.

Woodland/Alloy Casting, Inc., a full-service aluminum casting provider, faced a significant challenge in transitioning a marine exhaust housing part from a lost foam casting to a sand casting. The transition required an updated gating system to maintain the integrity of the part. The company aimed to produce a sound casting while keeping ingates and risers to a minimum, which would allow for a low yield and reduce the time needed to remove the rigging. The challenge was to design a new gating system that would feed the casting from the bottom flange and push the metal to the top of the casting. The traditional approach to testing the new gating system would have involved numerous costly and time-consuming tests, requiring a number of molds to determine the outcome of the new gating system.

CalsonicKansei North America (CKNA), a part of the global automotive parts manufacturer, CalsonicKansei Corporation based in Japan, was facing a challenge with squeak and rattle (S&R) in vehicle interiors. This issue was affecting the quality of their products and customer satisfaction. Despite being experienced in modern Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) techniques, CKNA had not fully explored the potential of using simulation technologies to investigate S&R issues before physical hardware production. Squeak and rattle are two phenomena which occur when two parts of an assembly are in relative motion due to a specific excitation load. The lack of knowledge in S&R methodology was preventing early issue detection, leading to inefficiencies in product completion and potential warranty claims.

The TUfast Eco team from the Technical University Munich, consisting of about 30 students from various fields of study, was tasked with designing, developing, and manufacturing an energy-efficient vehicle to compete in various energy-efficiency contests, including the Shell Eco-marathon. The challenge was to create an entirely new vehicle each year, with no component of the previous year's vehicle allowed to be used. This was to ensure that the technical expertise and development approaches of previous years were passed on to the new team. One of the most important aspects in the development of an energy-efficient vehicle was to reduce the mass of the vehicle. Therefore, the team members were constantly looking for weight-saving potentials, especially when designing the suspension and chassis.

APEL Extrusions Limited, a full-service extrusion manufacturer specializing in aluminum extrusion and finishing, was facing a significant challenge in testing die extrusion performance while limiting time and cost. The company, which has a presence in both Canada and the United States, provides aluminum extrusions for a variety of applications including residential and commercial construction, HVAC systems, recreational vehicles, and consumer goods. The aluminum extrusion industry has been experiencing an increased demand for flat rolled and extruded aluminum products, primarily from the transportation sector. This trend, expected to continue through 2020, has put pressure on companies like APEL to adapt to customer needs while maintaining high-quality solutions that meet extremely tight tolerances. A critical step in APEL's process of providing high-quality products is the testing phase that occurs before the actual extrusion process begins.

GE Power, a global leader in energy technology, solutions, and services, faced the challenge of maintaining precise understanding of the flow of cooling and leakage air in their gas turbine engines. This precision was crucial for achieving low emissions of NOx and setting world records for gas turbine combined cycle efficiency. The complexity of the internal engine components and their interactions during various operations, from cold start to shut down, required a sophisticated tool. The company needed a solution that could manage the clearances between rotating and stationary components to the width of a few human hairs, understand the transient thermal response of the engine, and track the impact of cooling and leakage air on gas turbine efficiency and emissions.

GE Aviation’s Systems business, a unit that designs and produces systems critical to the interface between jet engines and the airframe, was tasked with providing a backup generator (BUG) for a new aircraft. This generator was to provide electrical power in the event of multiple failures of other systems. The BUG had to be mounted onto a newly designed engine to receive mechanical power, but maintain independence from the engine to ensure functionality. It had its own oil network, pump, and sump to provide lubrication and cooling to the electromagnetic components and bearings in the generator. The lubrication system relied on a gravity drain to return the oil from a bearing cavity to the onboard sump where the oil pump was located. The team needed to ensure that the drain was adequately sized to allow for passage of the worst-case level of oil flow so that oil does not build up and cause excess heat generation or any other sinister effects within the bearings. Due to the constraints on size and program timing, an analytical approach was desired to determine the capability of the current drainage passage network and the minimum size that will be required.

Philips, a leading health technology company, was faced with the challenge of visualizing new product concepts quickly and efficiently. The goal was to work collaboratively with design colleagues and the engineering department to share feedback, understand challenges, and ultimately conceptualize final products. The company needed a tool that could be used by all members of the team to create consistency, facilitate easy file transfer/handoff with design peers and engineering, and increase overall team speed and efficiency. The existing tools were not meeting these requirements, leading to a search for a new software solution.

LEIBER Group, a company specializing in the design and production of lightweight metal components, faced a challenge in redesigning a suspension beam for a commercial vehicle. The original part was made of cast iron, but the customer required a lighter yet equally strong component. This challenge was set against the backdrop of the automotive industry's conflicting demands: vehicles need to be lighter to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, but they also need to be safe, reliable, and competitively priced. For many years, weight reduction was not a primary development goal, leading to heavier vehicles due to new systems that increase safety, comfort, and driving experience. The industry is now seeking new approaches and methodologies to realize optimal lightweight structures.

Triton Bikes, a custom titanium bicycle and unicycle frames producer based in Moscow, Russia, was faced with the challenge of improving the performance, reducing the weight, and simplifying the manufacturability of a custom bike rear yoke. The rear yoke, a part of the bicycle’s titanium frame that connects the rear chainstays and the bottom bracket, was initially manufactured using a complex, time-consuming, and wasteful process. The part was CNC milled out of a titanium block in two parts, with some of the material milled out from the inside to save weight. The two halves were then welded together. Triton Bikes wanted to redesign this part to withstand a load equal to 130 kg, reduce its weight, increase its strength, simplify the production technology, and reduce cost.

Competitive racing, particularly in the all-electric class of Formula E, demands the utmost from both driver skill and engineering innovation. However, the regulations in this field are stringent, with the battery being standardized across all vehicles. This leaves teams with limited areas for customization and performance enhancement. A leading Formula E team, recognizing these constraints, sought to develop dynamic models of their car to find new ways to optimize their systems for peak performance. The team aimed to develop customized racing strategies for different tracks, weather conditions, and pit stops, ensuring optimal use of their battery power. They also wanted to incorporate real-time simulations to update the team with information as variables change during the race, a feature not commonly available without a system-level modeling tool.

The automotive industry is under constant pressure to innovate and meet higher performance standards without delaying the time to market. This challenge is particularly evident at China Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT), where the integration of new technologies into passenger vehicles is a key focus. The company is developing new techniques to ensure the successful integration of various systems present in modern vehicle designs. One of the advanced technologies available for modern automotive design is system-level modeling, which uses specialized software to model the interactions across an entire system. However, the challenge lies in creating a powerful testing and simulation platform that can verify the functionality of new automotive technologies at earlier stages in the design process.

Harita Seating, a leading manufacturer of seating systems in India, was facing challenges in the homologation testing, regulations, and crash analysis for all commercial vehicle seats, bus passenger seats, and tractor & off-road seats. The company was looking for a solution that could help them reduce the total lead time, improve the quality of the components and tooling, and eliminate or reduce iterative reworking. The company was also seeking a solution that could provide new insights about the product performance and offer numerous design options. The challenge was to find a solution that could meet all these requirements without consuming any additional license.

The case study revolves around the exploration of the potential benefits of combining topology optimization and additive manufacturing in architectural projects. While this combination is common in industries like automotive or aerospace, it is rarely used in architecture. The challenge was to investigate the potential of this symbiosis for architectural projects. Bayu Prayudhi, an architectural student of the University of Delft, took up this challenge and re-designed an existing architectural project, the outdoor canopy at Baku international airport in Azerbaijan, originally designed by ARUP. The goal was to include topology optimization upfront in the design process and adapt the design for 3D printing. The challenge also involved dealing with boundary conditions such as costs, lead times, and technological limits while striving to combine function, shape, and innovation.

Dynamic Systems Analysis Ltd. (DSA) has been providing software solutions to the marine renewable energy industry for nearly a decade. Their ProteusDS and ShipMo3D simulation software tests virtual prototypes of vessels and equipment operating in ocean conditions. These virtual prototypes are crucial for the tidal energy industry as they help answer questions related to engineering design, planning, training, operations, and safety. Understanding the dynamic effects of ocean current, wind, and waves can significantly 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. However, one of the biggest technical barriers the tidal industry faces is installing and maintaining turbines and cables in challenging sites like the Minas Passage. Traditionally, sea trials and experience would have solely guided marine operations, but there are many unknowns and little experience in working in extreme tidal environments.

Thesan, an Italian company specializing in the design, manufacture, and distribution of mounting structures for photovoltaic plants, was faced with the challenge of optimizing the mounting structure of a medium-sized PV field with a power of 5 MW. The field consisted of 1700 arrays, each mounted on two poles, with each individual assembled structure weighing about 60 kg. The total weight of the mounted structures on the field was 204 tons of steel, with material costs of about 170,000 Euro. A weight reduction of only 5 kg per structure would lead to significant savings in material and cost. The structure was composed of two main parts, a steel driven pile and an aluminum rafter, with the weight reduction of the more costly aluminum parts being crucial. Another significant factor for cost savings was transportation, as PV fields are often built in remote areas with poor infrastructure. Lighter structures would not only mean less material costs in production, but also lower transportation efforts and costs. However, the new, lighter weight structures still had to be able to carry all occurring loads from natural causes such as wind or snow and the dead load of the structure, ensuring perfect quality, consistent stability and the requested stiffness of the structures.

Mubea, a leading automotive provider, is known for its innovative light weighting projects for large automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The company has pioneered the process of producing tailor-rolled blanks (TRB), a new type of process for high volume production. TRB allows engineers to tailor the blank so certain sheet thicknesses are located precisely where they are needed, resulting in the production of more cost-effective, lower weight components. However, the company faced challenges in improving its capacity for design optimization and innovation. Mubea was primarily using RADIOSS, a structural analysis solver in the HyperWorks suite used for highly non-linear problems under dynamic loadings. The company was looking to expand their current software contract and add a new cluster to their high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure to support current and new users of their design applications.

Mubea, a global supplier of automotive lightweight components, is the only supplier for Tailor Rolled Blanks (TRB), a cold rolling process that tailors sheet thicknesses to meet the needs of an automotive Body in White (BIW) structure. The company supports its customers by identifying lightweight potentials in a vehicle, designing proper tailor rolled parts, and conducting full light weight studies with full vehicle models with their own CAE resources. However, the design optimization of Tailor Rolled Blanks is normally based on explicit dynamic simulations, also known as crash simulations. Due to the large size of these crash models, a single simulation run takes between one to twelve hours. Exploring different design concepts leads to various simulation runs and potential optimization, but due to the long run times, this becomes prohibitive and can easily exceed a project’s allotted time frame, which decreases innovations.

Changan Automobile, a leading Chinese automotive brand, was grappling with the time-consuming and error-prone process of pre-processing and setting up their vehicle components, specifically the twist beam. The need for the model to be as close to reality as possible for accurate results made the process extremely labor-intensive. This created a significant bottleneck in the development process, making it increasingly difficult for Changan to keep projects within the designated timeline. The challenge was to find a solution that could streamline this process, reduce errors, and improve efficiency.

The challenge was to create a lightweight, high-performance product using additive manufacturing or 3D printing. The aerospace industry has been a pioneer in this field, and other sectors such as the automotive industry are following suit. The goal was to leverage the benefits of additive manufacturing, such as weight reduction and the ability to create complex geometries, to create an innovative product. The product in question was the Airbus APWorks Light Rider, the world's first 3D printed motorcycle prototype. The complex branched hollow structure of the Light Rider could not be realized with conventional manufacturing methods such as welding or milling. The challenge was to use topology optimization and a new material developed in-house by Airbus to create this innovative design.

Arkal Automotive, amidst its company growth and increased demand, was facing a significant challenge in its simulation department. The critical need was to reduce the preprocessing time, which was becoming a bottleneck in their operations. Interestingly, the issue was not related to the CPU time, but was primarily associated with the model preparation phase. The company was struggling to streamline and accelerate the creation of models, which was slowing down their overall workflow and affecting their productivity.