Development of structural assemblies for premium off-road vehicle

The task

A German auto­mo­tive supplier for carbon compo­nents in the premium sector commis­sioned us to support them in the devel­op­ment of load-bearing fibre composite compo­nents in several areas of a newly devel­oped vehicle. The client’s compe­ten­cies lie primarily in the construc­tive devel­op­ment of the assem­blies as well as produc­tion engi­neering. This is why our customer has been working with us for over 10 years to benefit from our exten­sive exper­tise in the areas of simu­la­tion and opti­mi­sa­tion of highly stressed light­weight compo­nents.

The chal­lenges and solu­tions in detail

Our customer has their own clients who define require­ments that must be met by us in the devel­op­ment of the design. These boundary condi­tions are usually no longer nego­tiable. There­fore, on the one hand, it is also part of our job to protect our customers from not being able to meet the defined condi­tions when supplying to their clients. On the other hand, we are respon­sible for enabling an optimal compo­nent design. too compli­cated produc­tion processes or too high mate­rial usage would result in exces­sive produc­tion costs, it is essen­tial to achieve the best balance between optimal struc­tural-mechan­ical result and economic manu­fac­tura­bility for serial produc­tion.

Our know-how

The following compe­tences at ar engi­neers led to success in this project:

• Strong exper­tise in the imple­men­ta­tion of complex simu­la­tions and opti­mi­sa­tion of assem­blies for auto­mo­tive serial produc­tion.
• Very good under­standing of ultra-light­weight design with CFRP /​carbon compos­ites.
• Eye on feasi­bility of the compo­nent despite complex mate­rial compo­si­tion.
• Exper­tise in numer­ical opti­mi­sa­tion with Ansys.
• Auto­mated result eval­u­a­tion in order to be able to respond quickly to changing require­ments from the require­ments of the customer.
• Our direct consul­ta­tions with the customer and their client enabled the project to run smoothly.

Our way

We reduced problem complexity to a ​“healthy” level, espe­cially with regard to numer­ical opti­mi­sa­tion tasks, so as not to lose sight of the calcu­la­tion goals. In addi­tion, there are some opti­mi­sa­tion goals that cannot always be clearly defined in the context of simu­la­tion. Here, we use iter­a­tive processes to ensure the best possible achieve­ment of objec­tives. Good manu­fac­tura­bility or simple imple­men­ta­tion cannot be directly derived as a single value from an opti­mi­sa­tion, but arise from the deriva­tions of the calcu­la­tion and assess­ments of our expe­ri­enced engi­neers and the close coop­er­a­tion with our customers.