HyperWorks Assists [AB]structures in Developing Record-Breaking Racing Yachts
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
- Marine & Shipping
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Structural Health Monitoring
About The Customer
[AB]structures is an Italian structural design and engineering company that provides innovative design solutions for lightweight structures in both advanced composite materials and high-performance metal alloys. With over a decade of experience in international yacht racing, from America’s Cup to round-the-world yacht races like the Volvo Ocean Race, [AB]structures has established itself as a leader in the field. In addition to the yacht racing industry, [AB]structures also provides its services to the aerospace industry and to the development teams of racing cars. The company is currently focused on structurally designing the Artemis Racing AC72 catamaran and wings for the 34th America‘s Cup 2013.
The Challenge
The engineers at [AB]structures, an Italian structural design and engineering company, were tasked with the challenge of developing three structurally optimized but unique racing yachts within a preset time frame. The yachts were to be used in the 2011 – 2012 edition of the Volvo Ocean Race. The challenge was further complicated by the Volvo Open70 Box Rule, which sets specific parameters for the yachts, such as the keel weight to be between 6.0-7.4 tons and the overall measured weight of the yacht to be no less than 14 tons. Each of the teams required different solutions from [AB]structures, pushing the design envelope and demanding innovative and efficient solutions.
The Solution
To meet the demands of the three professional teams, [AB]structures engineers utilized several HyperWorks tools in the development of the successful yachts. HyperWorks, with its capability of simulating complex carbon-composites laminate sequences, was particularly useful for this project as the VO70 yachts are designed and built completely from carbon composite. The engineers used HyperMesh to create finite element models, OptiStruct for optimization, the RADIOSS solver for linear and non-linear analysis, and HyperView to postprocess the results. These tools were used extensively to design and optimize the carbon structures of all three Volvo Open 70 yachts, resulting in fundamental structural improvements over the older-generation yachts that competed in the 2008 edition of the Volvo Ocean Race.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Airbus Soars with Wearable Technology
Building an Airbus aircraft involves complex manufacturing processes consisting of thousands of moving parts. Speed and accuracy are critical to business and competitive advantage. Improvements in both would have high impact on Airbus’ bottom line. Airbus wanted to help operators reduce the complexity of assembling cabin seats and decrease the time required to complete this task.
Case Study
Aircraft Predictive Maintenance and Workflow Optimization
First, aircraft manufacturer have trouble monitoring the health of aircraft systems with health prognostics and deliver predictive maintenance insights. Second, aircraft manufacturer wants a solution that can provide an in-context advisory and align job assignments to match technician experience and expertise.
Case Study
Aerospace & Defense Case Study Airbus
For the development of its new wide-body aircraft, Airbus needed to ensure quality and consistency across all internal and external stakeholders. Airbus had many challenges including a very aggressive development schedule and the need to ramp up production quickly to satisfy their delivery commitments. The lack of communication extended design time and introduced errors that drove up costs.
Case Study
Developing Smart Tools for the Airbus Factory
Manufacturing and assembly of aircraft, which involves tens of thousands of steps that must be followed by the operators, and a single mistake in the process could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix, makes the room for error very small.
Case Study
Accelerate Production for Spirit AeroSystems
The manufacture and assembly of massive fuselage assemblies and other large structures generates a river of data. In fact, the bill of materials for a single fuselage alone can be millions of rows of data. In-house production processes and testing, as well as other manufacturers and customers created data flows that overwhelmed previous processes and information systems. Spirit’s customer base had grown substantially since their 2005 divestiture from Boeing, resulting in a $41 billion backlog of orders to fill. To address this backlog, meet increased customer demands and minimize additional capital investment, the company needed a way to improve throughput in the existing operational footprint. Spirit had a requirement from customers to increase fuselage production by 30%. To accomplish this goal, Spirit needed real-time information on its value chain and workflow. However, the two terabytes of data being pulled from their SAP ECC was unmanageable and overloaded their business warehouse. It had become time-consuming and difficult to pull aggregate data, disaggregate it for the needed information and then reassemble to create a report. During the 6-8 hours it took to build a report, another work shift (they run three per day) would have already taken place, thus the report content was out-of-date before it was ever delivered. As a result, supervisors often had to rely on manual efforts to provide charts, reports and analysis.
