Granular Materials Simulation for Process and Equipment Design

With faster computers comes new complexities that, if understood, can be mastered to yield significant application performance and cost improvements. In this breakout session, we will investigate how the Azure HBv3 offering, with increased memory bandwidth and L3 cache, can drastically reduce time to solution for AcuSolve at scale. We will cover some benchmarks and show how they perform on Azure at various scale points. This data will enable AcuSolve users to reduce time to solution so they can dedicate more time to improving their product.

Together with cloud providers and our other HPC partners, Intel is driving the performance and flexibility that are critical to running advanced HPC workloads in the cloud. We collaborate across our HPC ecosystem to help cloud providers offer accelerated, secure, and agile environments using our latest technologies, such as Intel® Xeon® processors. As cloud customers continue exploring new possibilities and applications for HPC, Intel is dedicated to facilitating their success. Intel works with HPC partners from various industries to enable forward-thinking cloud use cases such as bursting, AI, and advanced analytics. Learn how Intel collaborates with Public and Private Cloud Service Providers to optimize HPC workloads for fast, cost-effective execution on Intel-based Cloud Instances.

Digital Twin is enjoying a breakthrough, fueled by advances in the sophisticated use of physics-based simulation models of varying fidelities. Connected and informed by data from the field with the help of artificial intelligence, Leonardo S.p.A. validates the performance of product systems virtually in the early stages of design to accelerate the development of their next generation of products.

The door closing feel is directly experienced by the customer and is typically treated as a subjective functional attribute. Objective targets have also been identified and correlated with subjective feelings, even though the final sign-off happens based on subjective assessment. Door Closing is a complex function involving multiple subsystems, their behavior & interface across parts.

In modern Electric Vehicles, body panel design plays a huge role in thermal management for the Li-Ion battery and powertrain performance. Early-stage aerodynamic and thermal prediction is necessary for surface optimization of vehicle exterior. Well defined and controlled flow phenomena need to be achieved around the vehicle during A- surface development phase, to improve the ride performance and handling of the vehicle on the road In this phase, Altair CFD Thermal solver AcuSolve drastically reduced the time consumed for analysis

The aerodynamics design of high-performance bikes plays a significant role in reducing the overall drag, increase in speed, and improving the range efficiency. To improve and sustain the performance of the EV, it is necessary to explore various factors such as aerodynamically streamlining the vehicle design, optimise frontal area, and cooling electronic components as well.

Dactem (a DAM group company), developer of specialist test, measurement and assembly solutions for the aerospace industries, presents an overview of the optimization of a thrust balance used for accurate measurements in electrical thruster qualification endurance testing. The presentation will provide details on how a Multiphysics simulation approach was used to find the optimum design taking mechanical, thermal and electromagnetic performance into account. Speakers: Emmanuel Pouleau, CEO, Dactem (a DAM Group company) Pierre Moutet, Engineer, Dactem (a DAM Group company) Duration: 15 minutes

Altair® EDEM™ is a discrete element method solver that enables users to accurately simulate particulate processes. When coupled with Altair Computational Fluid Dynamics (AcuSolve), these two solutions enable the simulation and analysis of two-phase solid-fluid systems. These simulation tools are widely used in various industries and in academia to deepen the understanding of different unit operations, such as mixers, coaters, fluidized beds and pneumatic conveyors. The unique and novel solutions that Altair offers address the challenges when using DEM and coupled CFD-DEM methods.

On an international stage, confidence in your design is the bridge to success. Engineering principles have been cultivated to satisfy design requirements and help analyze more and more accurately. For Team Albatross, as analysis of aircraft design holds crucial, Altair strikes to be the first choice. This integrated system houses major products such as Simlab, SImSolid, and Hypermesh which have helped us introduce new design validation analyses for the team. With Altair, we achieved greater computational power even on the simplest of laptop configurations. Altair Hypermesh has allowed dealing with complex geometries that come with our design with utmost ease, giving precise results. Powerful products of Altair such as SimSolid help us perform a plethora of analyses in a short span of time and completely eliminate the barrier of computing limitations. Such unique analysis tools of Altair have enabled Team Albatross to secure ranks in the top 3 for the past 2 years on an international level, and this year, Team Albatross also stood 1st nationwide. Seeing this, it is certain that with what Altair has to offer, Team Albatross is more than ready to advance in technological standards and bring laurels this year too!

The usability of a headset is largely determined by a comfortable fit and its resistance to everyday use. Learn from Alice Lin, Manager of Mechanics at GN Audio R&D how she introduced FEM simulation capabilities at Jabra. The presentation shows how product design benefits from structural analysis, design for comfort, and drop test simulation. A future extension of simulation capabilities intends to address more areas and improve the simulation-driven design process efficiency. Speaker: Alice Lin, Manager of Mechanics, GN Audio Duration: 22 minutes Click the AD icon to select alternative audio translations - French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.

AAM has been providing mechanical drivelines to automotive customers for more than 25 years. As the automobile transitions to electrification, so too must the driveline. AAM has developed a suite of innovative, lightweight, compact and cost-optimized electric drive units and electric beam axles to meet the growing global technology demand as electric vehicles continue to expand over the next decade. Engineering simulation, optimization and validation tools were significant enablers to increase the validation confidence and reduce the time to market for these new products.

Sustainable designs last longer. David Yáñez from Vortex Bladeless, a Spanish start-up, shares his vision of the technology, the strategies used for the integration of the different physical phenomena involved in the simulation-driven design, and the development of their resonating structures having minimal parts susceptible to wear by friction. The simulation results from CFD, with fluid-structure interaction, and electromagnetic field simulation are compared with experimental wind tunnel results and from in-service environments.

Dust is a serious problem for industries that handle and process bulk materials, causing deteriorating ambient air quality, human health concerns, while increases housekeeping labor costs to meet safe levels for health and fire risks. Learn from Dr. Andrew Grima about the technologies employed to develop a successful solution to minimize dust by using calibrated discrete element modeling (DEM) and new dust extraction technology.

AI-powered real-time melt-pool analytics for accelerated product development and production.

The ever-advancing digitization is being driven by the convergence of simulation, data, and HPC. While virtual methods, interoperable tools, and standardized interfaces become state of the art, the engineers and their management will play a significant role to break down silos and benefit from a Digital Thread. In this fireside chat, we will discuss the importance of people to unleash the potential of Digital Twins, how they can combine the different fields of product development and what is still missing to make the connection.

What if you could create 1D simulation models that retain the precision of your 3D analysis while running up to thousands of times faster?

An intuitive and robust CFD workflow is available in Altair® SimLab® - a process-oriented, feature-based finite element analysis software that allows you to quickly and accurately simulate the engineering behavior of complex assemblies. For fluid and thermal analyses, SimLab can make the model setup process even faster, repeatable, thereby minimizing tedious manual steps that can be automated. A live demo will be performed using real-world models to show the simple and smooth analysis process in Altair SimLab that goes from CAD to results in minutes.

For the past three decades, Altair’s optimization solutions have driven the innovative, lightweight, and structurally efficient designs of many products you see and use every day. The intense focus on additive manufacturing in recent years have given a boost to topology optimization and generative design, providing more freedom to explore alternatives. Today, we keep on innovating the technology, looking at including multiple physics, like thermal, electromagnetics, and fluid flow to drive design. Altair AcuSolve – coupled with Altair Optistruct – enables engineers to find the optimum shape by simply defining inlets, outlets, and the allowable space in which the solver can work. AcuSolve’s gradient-based topology optimization method will quickly and efficiently find the path of least resistance to deliver fluid flows with minimal effort.

With lightweighting at the forefront of the sustainability discussion, Altair HyperWorks has introduced a targeted environment to rapidly create models for topology optimization. The complete HyperWorks Design Space environment includes an automotive-only non-design space library, collision detection, and a fast and efficient voxel Boolean mesh engine. It facilitates the creation of new model variants in seconds without the need to go back to CAD. In addition to automotive BIW architecture studies, it supports design space local and global modeling for generic sub-systems throughout different industries. The concept adhesive workflow is also available to identify location of structural adhesive.

The Digital Twin concept is broadly applicable to all Altair customer base wanting to develop better products faster. We will explain how to maximize the value you can get from the Altair Platform for Digital Twins. We will illustrate how this solution helps diverse engineering teams develop better, more complex products faster by avoiding work in silos. This will include proven uses cases for the convergence of simulation and data.

Nowadays, many Machine Learning techniques able to identify dynamic models from data are taking hold. But, can we support the learning phase leveraging our expertise obtaining models with better generalization property? To tackle this need and others we have developed a novel approach, romAI. This application combines AI and system modeling techniques to generate reusable continuous dynamic models extremely time-efficient, hence used as Reduced-Order Models to speed-up system design and optimization or in Digital Twins/Simulators for real-time applications.

In this session we will highlight how Altair HyperWorks supports efficient data processing and visualization, thereby helping users to make decisions faster. From the simulation-driven design workflow, fully integrated with HyperWorks’ model build functionalities, to the high-performance visualization and reporting of simulation results, HyperWorks provides the best framework to visualize, process, and report data

Altair products are quickly evolving into AI-driven products. Starting from the modeling and visualization products, the latest release of Altair HyperWorks includes features like shapeAI, which quickly finds and classifies parts “by shape” inside geometry files or finite element meshes - when you want to locate all of the bolts, shafts, and gears in a complex assembly - by applying machine learning.

This presentation provides an introduction to the Discrete Element Method (DEM) and its application to solve powder processing challenges. Use cases presented include the use of Altair EDEM to simulate a twin screw extruder as well as a proof of concept study using EDEM with CFD to investigate pneumatic conveying.

Presented at the 2nd Altair Academic Outreach Event in June 2021

Speaker: Dr. Akeem Olaleye, Research Fellow, University of Limerick
Duration: 17 minutes

For several years now, co-simulation between Multibody Dynamics (MBD) codes like MotionSolve and Discrete Element Method (DEM) software like EDEM has been used for many applications such as vehicles and material transportation. One missing link has been a realistic tire model that not only could interact with the soil material in a realistic way but also show the influence of varying tire pressure, change in contact area and pressure distribution over said contact area.

For very soft material such as deep mud with a high-pressure tire, using a rigid wheel is a decent approximation. But for tires on harder surface, this method has several short comings. For example, a rigid representation of the tire will have neglectable rolling resistance while the pressure distribution on a real tire has its peak well ahead of the centerline of the tire producing a resisting moment to the motion. The contact patch area will in reality not depend on sinkage, but the sinkage is dependent on the contact area that is dependent on load and internal pressure.

This presentation introduces the new PM-FlexTire model that is integrated in EDEM and will work with MotionSolve. Requirements for creating and correlating the tire model is presented together with several application examples on mud, clay and gravel beds.

Presented at the ATCx Heavy Equipment in May 2021.

Speaker: Jesper Slattengren, Technical Fellow, Pratt Miller

Duration: 20 minutes

The chassis of a the RAVO 5 iSeries street sweeper has been a proven design that has remained relatively unchanged since the mid-60’s. However, due to increasing weight and size requirements, as well as possible changes to the driving mechanism, an overhaul of the chassis platform is needed. To develop a new (modular) chassis, which is suited for upcoming and future changes, a CAE-driven design approach is chosen, which is being performed by VIRO. When using computer-aided engineering (CAE), the chief problem is to define or estimate the acting loads and / or boundary conditions on a structure. In case such a structure is dynamically loaded, such a determination is further aggravated. Furthermore, if that structure is a chassis, a wide range of load cases and interconnected systems (e.g. tyres, suspension) effect the multifaceted loading behavior.

By utilizing multibody dynamics (MBD) and creating a MBD-model of the current street sweeper, a first step is taken towards developing a new (modular) chassis. The calculated loads and moments acting on the suspensions and chassis are quantified for e.g. several worst case scenarios, which allows for well-founded decisions in relation to the new design. Furthermore, these load conditions can be used as input for future topographic optimizations and / or stress analyses. An important part, when creating a CAE-model, i.e. in this case a MBD-model, is the validation of that model by experiments and /or analytic formulations. Consequently several calculated load cases have been tested in the field and in mutual cooperation. A subsequent verification shows that the measured accelerations correlate well with the calculated accelerations from the MBD-model.

Presented at the ATCx Heavy Equipment in May 2021.

Speaker: Thijs Romans, Group Leader Engineering Analysis, VIRO

Duration: 20 minutes

Zoomlion Heavy Industry have been developing a simulation model of a threshing system of a combine harvester using the Discrete Element Method (DEM). Optimization of the performance parameters like grain recovery, grain damage and grain loss with an optimal use of power is the overall goal of the model. Dealing with small size multi-spheres with varying material properties and processing of large number of particles in a reasonable time were the real challenges which we successfully handled using Altair’s EDEM software. An important performance indicator of the agricultural crop processing and grain handling systems is the damage to the grain that occurs in the system.

Zoomlion are continuously discussing and working with Altair’s team to make it possible to study this important performance parameter. They are fully determined to address & solve the problems which are considered un-solvable in construction and agricultural industry of the world.

Presented at the ATCx Heavy Equipment in May 2021.

Speaker: Syed Hussain, Senior Mechanical Engineer Zoomlion Heavy Industry NA

Duration: 20 minutes

The production of agricultural commodities is a multi-billion dollar industry in Canada representing nearly 7% of the national GDP. While the food production system is complex and specific to each type of product grown, challenges in processing, handling, and storing agricultural commodities occur throughout the value chain.

Significant benefits and insights have been derived from the ability to model the interactions between granular particles in systems in the value chain. Two case studies from industry are presented where the effects of the geometry of bulk grain storage and processing equipment are considered. In one case, detailed insights were developed about the variation in bulk properties due to filling and storage details. In a second case, geometric design details were optimized virtually during the development of novel processing equipment. This resulted in improved performance and reduced physical prototyping costs.

Presented at the ATCx Heavy Equipment in May 2021.

Speaker: Ian Paulson, Technical Services Lead – Simulation and Numerical Modeling Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI)

Duration: 20 minutes

Several OEMs currently face the challenge of information silos due to poor integration of models across the product life cycle. Furthermore, there is limited reuse of models between programs and the variation of modeling maturity across various Engineering disciplines results in lack of traceability. In this short presentation, we will look at solutions and workflows that leverages a systems model as a common language of communication while facilitating various types of real time dashboards and visualization to help understand and optimize the entire Mechatronic system performance.

Presented at the ATCx Heavy Equipment in May 2021.

Speaker: Keshav Sundaresh, Global Director – Smart Systems & Mechatronics, Altair

Duration: 20 minutes

G.S. Vidyaprakash presents how Lakshmi Machine Works Ltd. drives the design process with simulation. In his presentation First Time Right Machine Design with CAE Simulation, he discusses reliable simulation techniques to predict & prevent failure modes.

Controller strategy expert Lorenzo Moretti presents how to improve Cobot collaboration. In the context of virtual commissioning, he discusses how more meaningful controller design is possible with realistic plant models.

Dr. Fatma Kocer VP, Engineering Data Science at Altair showcases the impact of AI in development environments. In particular on how CAE tools will evolve and Design Exploration is taken to the next level.

Brett Chouinard, President and COO of Altair discusses Development challenges in Industrial machinery and illustrates how Altair's scalable simulation solutions provide the environment for simulation-driven innovation and how machine learning expands the capabilities furter.

Benoit Pelourdeau presents how Stanley Robotics SAS drives the design process with simulation, to develop the world's first robotic car storage service. Learn from him how the interdisciplinary mechatronic product development team succeeds with accurate virtual prototypes.

Daniel Jauss, Application Engineer CAE, gives a Demo Sessions on Altair Simulation Solutions for faster evaluation of real-world machines, explaining how to improve system understanding with dynamic motion analysis to Identify real behavior of the machine assembly and Identify peak loads.

Simon Zwingert, Technical Consultant, gives a Demo Sessions on Altair Simulation Solutions for faster evaluation of real-world machines, explaining how, to improve the design with studies and the design exploration on the complete assembly to perform weld line optimization.

Christian Kehrer, Business Development Manager System Modelling, gives a Demo Sessions on Altair Simulation Solutions for faster evaluation of real-world machines, explaining how CNC control optimization is performed to realize toolpath error correction of a CNC milling machine, with system simulation and how more effective controller design with realistic plant models is realized.

Indradev Babu, Managing Director, UCAM PVT LTD, explains how he developed a CNC Jobshop to the largest manufacturer of CNC Rotary tables—presenting different development examples, he explains how Simulation Driven Design helps him to differentiate and what simulation Strategies he implements in the customer-centric development for the following generation Machine Tools at UCAM.

Industry expert Dennis Baum presents how Weber Maschinenbau applies simulation, how simulation can be used along product lifecycle and which benefits arise to customers and internal processes.

Industry Innovator Luca Gatti Luca invites you to a virtual coffee break, to see why it is necessary to model and deeply study the physics behind a cup of coffee. Learn why Gruppo Cimbali SpA is creating digital twins of their coffee machines to fully embrace the digital transformation.