Dr Stefan Gaßmann, Dr Axel Hänschke

CAE @ Ford

2011 European HyperWorks Technology Conference

Bonn, November 8–9, 2011

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A few words about Ford

The Ford CAE landscape

The Challenges CAE faces

Opportunities that we should leverage

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Ford

Global Company

• Global

– 166,000 employees

– 70 plants

– 2 Brands: Ford, Lincoln

– Market Share 2010:

16.4% USA

9.8% South America

9.2% Australia

2.5% China, India

• Europe

– 66,000 employees

– 22 plants

– 1 Brand: Ford

– Market Share 2011 YTD:

8.4% EU19

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Global Engineering

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Köln

Germany

Shanghai

China Cuautitlán

Mexico

Chennai

India

Dearborn MI

USA

Broadmeadows

Australia

Camaçari

Brazil

Dunton

UK

Global Manufacturing

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Saarlouis

Germany Chongqin

China

Dearborn MI

USA

Pacheco

Argentinia

Example: C Car

Valencia

Spain

St Petersburg

Russia

Pretoria

South Africa

Santa Rosa

Philippines

Hanoi

Vietnam

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Global Process

• Global

Product

Development

System

(GPDS)

“We have implemented a global product strategy that calls for product

excellence through leadership in design, safety, fuel economy, driving

quality, interior comfort and convenience features and technology –

particularly infotainment,” said Derrick Kuzak, group vice president, Global

Product Development. “This strategy aligns the global product and

technology plans and all vehicle programs around the attributes that

distinguish all Ford vehicles globally in a crowded marketplace.”

The strategy also included the development of a global DNA – a standard

for the way a vehicle should feel, sound, drive and even smell. “Defining a

global DNA ensures the development of vehicles that are ‘unmistakably a

Ford,’” said Kuzak. “It also ensures consistency of engineering and

development within the Ford team and among our supplier partners.”

A global standard also was established for the way Ford products and

components are made. “We all need to be on the same page so that it’s very

clear what our processes and deliverables are and how we communicate

our needs with one another,” said Raj Nair, vice president, Engineering,

Global Product Development. “If we’re trying to reinvent the process every

single time, we’re losing valuable time that could be spent engineering new

vehicles.”

Global Product

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CAE

CAE Toolset

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CAE Toolset

• Finite Element tools with Pre- and Post-Processing

– General purpose: Abaqus implicit, explicit, MSC Nastran, Radioss

implicit, explicit, etc.

– Crash: Radioss explicit, LS-Dyna

– CFD: PowerFLOW (aero), RadTherm (heat protection), Fluent

(cooling, clima, water manaagement), OpenFOAM under review

– General Pre- and Post-Processing tools: ANSA, MetaPost, Animator,

etc.

• Multibody Simulation tools with Pre-and Post-Processing

– ADAMS, ADAMS-Car, MADYMO

• General Purpose Simulation Environments

– MatLAB SimuLINK

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Altair Products in Use

HyperWorks (V10, near future V11)

• HyperMesh (general Pre Processing)

• HyperCrash (Pre Processing for Crash)

• Radioss explicit (Crash and Occupant simulation)

• Radioss implicit (Optistruct, Topology Optimization)

• HyperView/HyperGraph (general Post Processing)

• MotionView / MotionSolve (Open MBS simulation

environment, for kinematic and dynamic simulation)

• HyperStudy, solver independent environment for DOE‘s and

Optimization

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Siemens Teamcenter for Simulation

TC Sim

• Drive the Assembly Process from PLM System

Pre-Processor Solver

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Concept Modelling Method

• Principle types of Modelling – Geometrical representation

• SFE CONCEPT Model Library

Mapping Area

Platform Major Assembly

& Fully Assembled Top Hat Structure

Platform Assembly

Mid Floor Area and Rear Structure

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Challenges

‘Concept’ CAE

• Parametric tools (such as SFE Concept), CAD and CAE are

not seamlessly integrated – as enabler for ‚CAE drives CAD‘

• Existing surrogate CAD models and analyses are often not

easily and efficiently retrievable

• Organisational differences between ‚pre-program‘ and

program teams require tools and/or processes for hand-over

with minimal loss

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Verification CAE

• CAE always traces CAD development by a few weeks –

‘CAE cycle time’

• CAE typically requires high maturity of CAD – surface quality,

detail, geometric compatibility, welds & connectors

– Repair work required for / through CAE

• CAE requires ‘non-geometric data’ such as masses and

inertia, spec and material data that are often stored in

multiple databases

• Where process fails, surrogate data are often not easily and

efficiently retrievable

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Material Data

• CAE requires measured and validated material properties

– Difficult to keep pace with developing ‘new’ materials

• Ford has in house Material database

– Drives necessity to import data from material vendors

• Translation of data into ‚material cards‘ for multiple CAE

codes mostly manual

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CAE Confidence vs. Test Confidence

• CAE models are generally recognised as ‚approximation‘ of

final vehicle, prototypes are usually not

• Quantification of delta Test / CAE expected from CAE –

Quantification of delta prototype test / production vehicle

uncommon

• CAE analyses are typically run at ‚nominal‘ – Tests are often

run at unspecified ‚variability‘ condition

• No metric available to describe overall ‘quality’ of CAE model

– beyond meshing criteria

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Robustness

• Robustness vs. human influence

– Distributed teams for model build, assembly and analyses

– Multitude of software settings (‘header set’) require detailed guidelines

• Robustness vs. solver & infrastructure

– Can results be reproduced on differing hardware or with later software

versions?

– Reduction of noise/scatter of model results in crash analysis

– Translation and migration where different solver are used

• Robustness vs. variability

– Time and resources (people, hardware, licenses) often prevent to fully

exploit variation analyses

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Opportunities

In the Next Release …

• New functionality, additional features and bug fixes are

expected

But also consider

• Ease of Use – for new and distributed resources

• Robustness – against non-optimal input data

• Robustness – against user influence

• Automation – to incorporate material data and properties

• Automation – to update the model after CAD updates

• Automation – to allow for MDO and DoE with less resources

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CAE Life Cycle

• Provide End-to-End Lifecycle

– CAE BoM creation — meshing — model build — analysis results —

CAE sign-off

• Consider early phase without full CAD / BoM

– Vehicles are initially created in conceptual (CAE) tools and mature

into CAD driven by CAE

• Allow for integrated data sharing

– Multiple brands — Efficient reuse of data — suppliers — off-shore

work

• Move from CAD/BoM and Test/Analysis based proposals to

truly integrated approach

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Tool Capability

• Integrated data flow from conceptual design & CAE into CAD

tools

• Extend CAE Confidence / Capability into new physical

phenomena

– Focus on where TGW are in our vehicles

– Consider new vehicle technologies

• Reduce need for multiple niche products

– Quickly integrate specialty tools into large packages

• Develop approaches for intuitive presentation / immersion of

results

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Turn-Around Time

• CAE is fast enough to drive and/or enable decisions in all

phases

• CAE is off the critical path in the development process

• Key requirements

– CAE Lifecycle solution

– Efficient retrieval / reuse / creation of CAE models

– Fully automated mesh generation – model build – analysis

– Software optimisation for compute environment

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Thank You Dr Stefan Gaßmann | sgassman@ford.com | +49.221.9034728

Dr Axel Hänschke | ahaensch@ford.com | +49.221.9033441