Industrial Factory Automation

Italian car manufacturer Ferrari is using software from Ansys to optimise automobile design and performance. Ferrari is using software from Ansys to predict thermal comfort in a vehicle's interior. In order to assess comfort qualitatively and quantitatively, the car manufacturer worked with Pisa University in Italy to define thermal comfort indices and to evaluate the general aspects of thermal comfort. Since an experimental approach was not practical, the investigating engineering team used fluid dynamics software from Ansys to perform the calculations. According to Giovanni Lombardi, professor of aeroplane aerodynamics and vehicle aerodynamics at Pisa University, the Ansys engineering simulation software rendered accurate and reliable results. The research team based its resulting 'global thermal comfort index' on several local indices: the thermal equilibrium of the human body, discomfort caused by drafts and horizontal and vertical temperature gradients. Various facto...

Renault has used ESI's Pam-Comfort system for the preliminary design of a new seat. ESI's Pam-Comfort software offers a scalable and customised solution dedicated to virtual manufacturing and virtual testing (static and dynamic) of the soft parts of a seat. Virtual seat prototyping consists of several chained simulated steps ranging from seat manufacturing and occupant static seating, to occupied seat NVH (noise and vibration), where the stresses resulting from each step are needed for the next one. The chaining is necessary to accurately predict the behaviour of the seats under numerous loading conditions (trimming, dummy loading, various human anthropometries and vibrations) and for various design changes (materials and shape). At Renault, where the full virtual seat prototyping methodology is being deployed, an important step after the preliminary design of a new seat is the virtual testing of the dynamic comfort performance using Pam-Comfort. To accurately predict seat com...