Automotive webinar series I Digital Materials

An integrative simulation approach for injection-moulded short fibre-reinforced plastics enables the consideration of process-induced morphology like local varying fibre orientation. The knowledge of these process-induced micromechanical characteristics, which are provided by injection moulding simulations and are transferred by a mapping process to structural Finite Element (FE) analysis, is essential for high quality FE simulations.

Beyond the application of the required simulation software tools in each phase of the integrative approach, the calibration and validation of suitable material models is a challenge. Experimental testing campaigns can be highly time-consuming. The sample preparation by itself requires the material to be delivered, the plates to be injection moulded and the milling of the samples. In addition, CT scans need to be performed to characterise the material microstructure. The overall duration of the testing campaign also depends on the thermal or mechanical measurements to be conducted. For instance, the characterisation of the creep behaviour of a reinforced thermoplastic requires tests to be performed at different stress levels, for various specimens orientations, and at different temperatures. The testing campaign can easily extend over three months for the creep characterisation of a single material.

The uncertainties related to the material properties (e.g. stiffness & failure) & process simulation data (e.g fibre orientation) provide an additional challenge in the multiscale simulation to validate the robustness of a given design.

In the first part of the webinar, an integrative simulation workflow for virtual testing will be demonstrated. It includes the entire process from the virtual manufacturing process simulation, through the micromechanical material model, to the structural simulation at the component level. The approach allows a significant reduction of the time effort to a few days only to generate material data. The workflow is applied for a quasi-static loading and long-term creep loading at both specimen and component levels. The simulation results are compared against experimental measurements.

In the second part of the webinar, a new automated workflow considering the uncertainties related to the fibre orientation prediction will be presented. This method aims to perform UQ (Uncertainty Quantification) based design, also known as Robust Design using Digimat & Odyssee.

Date & Time: 06 July 2023 at 10:00 am EDT I 4:00 pm CEST

Presenters:

• Hédi Skhiri – Senior Lead Technical Specialist at Hexagon

Hédi is a Senior Lead Technical Specialist at Hexagon. He has spent over 9 years providing services, supporting, and training customers to use Digimat to achieve their goals in the material modelling of composites.

• Jan-Martin Kaiser – Research Engineer at Robert Bosch

Jan-Martin completed his PhD on the micromechanical modelling of short fibre-reinforced thermoplastics. He has been working for many years as Senior Manager and further as a Research Engineer at Robert Bosch.

• Ana Rodriguez Sanchez – Research Engineer at Robert Bosch

Ana completed her PhD on the mechanical and damage behaviour of short fibre-reinforced thermoplastics. She has been working for many years as Senior Expert and further as a Research Engineer at Robert Bosch.

Short fibre reinforced thermoplastic parts that are subjected to mechanical and cyclical loading for a long period of time eventually fail. To prevent premature failure in service, predictability is key when designing load bearing components. The lifetime depends on the nature of the thermoplastic material, but also on the amount of reinforcement, the type of reinforcement and the setup of the manufacturing process. All these ingredients make the fatigue modelling of short fibre reinforced plastic parts highly challenging.

Dedicated solutions at several stages of the modelling workflow are thus required. The ingredients needed are (a) an accurate material model for any orientation tensor and any loading type & direction, (b) a procedure allowing us to identify model parameters from a reduced set of experimental data, (c) an efficient structural and fatigue solver enabling the prediction of lifetimes for various types of loading conditions (constant amplitude, random signal, frequency/time domain loadings, etc.) and (d) an overall methodology able to account for stress gradients to deliver accurate predictions for any part geometry and mesh.

In this webinar, we will present a solution that allows you to accurately predict the fatigue lifetimes of short fibre reinforced parts for a variable amplitude loading. The framework combines engineering tools that enable design engineers to predict fatigue lifetimes of engineering plastics applications that account for material anisotropy and nonlinear behaviour. The webinar highlights the key features of the framework and demonstrates its ability to predict the response of a representative demonstration part.

Date & Time: 11 July 2023 at 10:00 am EDT I 4:00 pm CEST

Presenters:

• Dustin Souza – Business Enablement Lead for Automotive at Hexagon

Dustin graduated with his Bachelors and Masters in aeronautics and aerospace engineering from Purdue University. He currently works as a Business Enablement Lead with Hexagon where he is in charge of helping key automotive customers build up their expertise in plastic materials, providing them with guidance on how to capture complex structural performances like fatigue & creep and analysing the root causes of failure for various composite parts/applications across the automotive ecosystem.

• Satvir Aashat – CAE Material Technical Specialist, Composites and Thermoplastic Materials at General Motors

Satvir Aashat is currently CAE Material Technical Specialist, Composites and Thermoplastic Materials at General Motors. He got his Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Wayne State University, Michigan, in 2010. Satvir has been working with General Motors for the past 12 years. He has been involved in the CAE analysis and design of the industry-first GMC Sierra’s CarbonPro truck bed. In his current role, Satvir develops new methods and material models to predict the fracture and fatigue behaviour for Composites and Thermoplastic Materials for virtual analysis.

With the increasing complexity of materials used in industry, along with the raising awareness of environmental concerns, the need for efficient management of material data has become essential. An enterprise-scalable system that manages large amounts of material data and processes from a central location with full traceability will be introduced in this webinar.

By establishing a robust material data management system, enterprises can streamline their processes, reduce errors, and enhance product development cycles. MaterialCenter enables engineers to make informed decisions regarding material selection, design optimisation, and performance evaluation to maximise efficiency and accelerate product innovation.

Furthermore, effective material data management improves communication and facilitates collaboration between different teams. MaterialCenter ensures an access to consistent and reliable data with controlled access to secure confidential data. Project overviews can be displayed and work requests can be issued with approval workflows to ensure best practices and readiness of materials for use in industrial projects and applications.

Date & Time: 13 July 2023 at 10:00 am EDT I 4:00 pm CEST

Presenters:

• Keith Dunlop – Product Manager for MaterialCenter and Materials Connect at Hexagon

As a Mechanical Engineering Graduate with a long history at MSC, now Hexagon, Keith moved from Bombardier Aerospace in 1996. Keith has occupied several roles over the years supporting customer activity with a wide variety of products and supporting a wide variety of disciplines. More recently he has worked closely with customers for both MaterialCenter and SimManager and is very familiar with requirements from both authors and consumers of data in various industries and the associated challenges related to deployment and adoption. Keith is the Product Manager for both MaterialCenter and Nexus Materials Connect.

This webinar aims at demonstrating our approach that enables the enrichment of an initial material database by combining advanced material modelling and AI. On the one hand, advanced material modelling, through multiscale material modelling, and embedded material science laws, bring accuracy and domain knowledge. On the other hand, AI brings efficiency, portability and quantification of the accuracy of the predictions. The database of filled and unfilled plastics is enriched for different temperatures, filling amounts, strain rates and loading angles. The targeted performances are stress strain responses until failure.

Date & Time: 18 July 2023 at 10:00 am EDT I 4:00 pm CEST

Presenters:

• Moncef Salmi – Business Enablement Lead for AI at Hexagon

Moncef Salmi is a PhD, engineer and MBA in data science applied to material science. He is graduated jointly from ENSAIT and ENSAM ParisTech in France. He earned his PhD degree at the Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand in France in 2012. He earned his MBA at the University of Northampton in England in 2019. He joined Hexagon upon the completion of his PhD in 2012. As Business Enablement Lead in charge of AI for materials, Moncef has expertise in the full stack designing, development, deployment and commercialisation of highly applied AI based solutions for material and process modelling.