Product category:
FEA and structural analysis software
News Release from: Sharc | Subject: Harpoon
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 25 February 2008
Software simplifies car design
Rieter has been able to make complex full car model creation a much more simple task than with previous methods.
Rieter Automotive Systems helps make cars more comfortable, lighter and more efficient It uses CFD, together with radiation analysis, to support its business units in thermal shielding, engine undertrays and underbody covers
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 17 Feb 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Rieter also offers research in new thermal/aerodynamic packaging concepts for the whole vehicle, focusing on better control (mixing or splitting) of hot and cold airflows.
To do this, detailed underhood and underbody vehicle models are required.
With the help of Harpoon, the extreme mesher developed by Sharc, Rieter has been able to make complex full car model creation a much more simple task than with previous methods.
Harpoon is a fully automatic hex dominant mesher which can mesh complex geometries directly from the raw CAD without the need for a surface mesh.
"Meshing is a critical part of this process" says Edward Bendell, Thermal CAE Specialist.
"Fitting a good-quality mesh between closely spaced components is very challenging and in the past we could not trust 3D volume meshing software to give a mesh within a certain time deadline".
"With Harpoon, this problem has all but been eliminated".
"The biggest advantage of Harpoon is that, while mesh problems can still occur, they can be quickly identified and rectified, in a 'human time scale'" Bendell said.
"Usually it takes several re-meshes before the analyst is happy, but at 5-10 minutes per mesh, this is no longer the bottleneck it once was, freeing up the engineer to fine tune to get the best mesh possible rather than being happy to have a valid mesh at all".
"Because the resulting meshes are strongly hex-dominant, the ratio of solution quality to mesh size is far better than would be expected on a mesh which includes Tetrahedra", Bendell said.
"Our correlation research based on wind tunnel experiments has also shown cell type to be important for obtaining good thermal solutions when convection is a part of the process".
Rieter uses Harpoon to create detailed meshes including boundary layers (important for heat protection work) on the full car.
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