Ethicon, a world-class medical devices company, faced several challenges in its operations. The rapid selection of manufacturing materials compliant in global markets was critical to assure patients, practitioners, and purchasing organizations of the biocompatibility of their medical devices. Ensuring supply chain continuity and minimizing risks of obsolescence for medical devices due to regulatory changes were also crucial in meeting Ethicon’s ongoing commitment to maintaining patient care. Furthermore, the engineers at Ethicon were developing the next generation of medical devices and needed to access historical material data to accelerate new product development. The process of centralizing and digitalizing its materials information was a significant challenge that Ethicon needed to overcome.

BlueScope Steel Limited, a division in New Zealand, produces 650,000 tons of steel annually from locally sourced iron sand and coal. A crucial part of this process involves the direct reduction of iron sand by char in four rotary kilns. These kilns, large structures with 65 meter-long revolving cylinders, are used to remove oxygen from iron sand to produce a partially reduced material containing the correct amount of carbon for feeding into downstream melters. However, the company faced challenges in understanding the flow patterns, temperature, and concentration contours inside these kilns. Accretion layers or rings, derived mainly from impurities, occasionally form on the inner face of the kiln shell, limiting the production rate. The company needed a solution to this complex problem involving highly turbulent flows, chemical reactions, heat transfer, and a very large geometry in a reasonable time. They also needed to test a range of operating conditions and geometries efficiently.

Ballard Power Systems Inc., a Canadian company that designs, develops, and manufactures zero-emission PEM fuel cell stacks, faced a significant challenge with their MK9 series of cell voltage monitoring (CVM) systems. These systems, used in automotive fuel cell stacks, monitor the voltages produced by cells during operation. However, the company was experiencing CVM chip solder joint failures, which could prompt a false failure signal to the vehicle control unit, potentially shutting down the operation of the fuel cell and even the entire fuel cell engine. This issue was directly impacting the reliability of the entire fuel cell stack. The thermal expansion of the PCB and potting material, which protects the CVM from the environment, was causing deflections that resulted in stress on the solder joints. The company needed to gain insight into the structural load on electronic components during thermal cycling, identify probable areas where excessive stress could cause early CVM chip failure, and identify a potting material that would not exert thermal expansion stress on the CVM components.

The continuous casting of steel, particularly when casting different grades in the same sequence, produces transition billets. These billets do not conform to any specific grade and thus need to be downgraded or diverted. The challenge lies in identifying the extent and location of this intermixed zone to minimize production and quality issues. The process of billet casting to convert liquid steel to solid billets is fraught with uncertainties and variables. For instance, the casting speed may change or certain strands may become non-functional, altering the flow in the tundish and changing the transition tonnage. Predicting and optimizing the transition tonnage during the grade change under different plant scenarios is a significant challenge. To better understand and manage this process, a CFD model was developed.

ELI Beamlines’ latest advancement is its High-repetition-rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS). HAPLS is the first diode-pumped and highest average power petawatt system (300 W, 10 Hz repetition rate) ever built. HAPLS can achieve focused intensities between 1021-1023 watts per square centimeter, the equivalent of all sunlight as it arrives at the earth being focused to the diameter of a human hair. Achieving the extreme high-power, short-pulse features of HAPLS required rigorous design validation and highly nuanced beam propagation capabilities.

Life Fitness, a global leader in fitness equipment manufacturing, faced a significant challenge in ensuring the reliability and safety of their cardiovascular and strength equipment. The equipment extensively uses cylindrical bushings and plain bearings to transmit high radial loads from a rotating shaft to a support structure. To meet reliability goals, it was crucial to accurately determine the contact pressures between the bushing and shaft to ensure that bushing wear rates were within acceptable limits. Traditional methods, such as bushing catalogs and Hertzian formulas, were used to predict these pressures. However, these methods failed to account for axial misalignment between the shaft and bushing, which could lead to extremely high nonuniform pressure distributions, making it difficult to ensure the longevity and safety of the equipment.

ABB Switzerland Ltd., a global leader in power and automation technology, faced a significant challenge with their HiPak modules. These modules, used in a variety of applications from traction converters to motor drives, required different cooling systems to remove the heat dissipated by the insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT) and diodes. The cooling systems varied substantially, making it crucial for ABB to predict the maximum package temperature to ensure reliability and proper functionality. The challenge was to find a solution that could accurately predict the temperature field of the coupled HiPak module–heat exchanger system and provide a reliable means to find the optimal heat exchanger configuration.

Samsung Electronics Inc.’s IPT group specializes in the thermal design and analysis of semiconductor packages. Their main product group includes microprocessors for mobile products, display drive ICs, smart cards, and display panel processors. The IPT group is responsible for the analysis of leadframe, ball grid array (BGA), and tape automated bonding (TAB) packages, as well as the development of new package designs. However, as the demand for more complex modules of system-in-package (SIP) and package-on-package (POP) design increases, the need for more accurate and easier-to-use simulation solutions becomes apparent. The challenges faced by the IPT group include detailed modeling, type diversity, maintaining device integrity and its electrical performance, and making thermal software accessible to non-thermal engineers.

Trek Bicycle Company, a global leader in bicycle design, manufacturing, and distribution, faced a significant challenge in maintaining its competitive edge in the industry. The company's success hinged on its ability to release innovative products that met stringent strength and stiffness requirements, all while adhering to critical product launch deadlines. A specific challenge was to expedite the market release of a cycle with an assembly composed of an aluminum steer tube bonded with epoxy adhesive into a composite fork that is bolted to the wheel axle. The complexity of the assembly and the need for precision in design and manufacturing posed a significant hurdle in meeting the desired speed to market.

Mohyi Labs, a pioneering company in the field of drone technology, faced significant challenges in the development of their Bladeless Drone. The company was working on a novel Ducted Counter-Vortex Radial Impeller Propulsion technology, but the design optimization process was proving to be a major hurdle. Prior to the involvement of ANSYS, the process required a considerable degree of detective work, relying heavily on indirect methods to deduce the characteristics of the invisible forces at work. While this approach was successful in the early stages, it was time-consuming, significantly increased the difficulty level, and escalated development costs. Mohyi Labs recognized the need for advanced physics simulations to achieve the level of precision engineering required for their project. However, these advanced simulations were, until recently, exclusive to large corporations, academic, and military users.

The pharmaceutical industry is fraught with numerous challenges, from drug delivery to equipment design optimization and scale-up problems. Increasing raw material costs and the unavailability of the right raw materials at the right time pose significant issues in meeting stringent product delivery deadlines. Dr. Reddy’s, a global pharmaceutical company, faced these challenges and sought to explore engineering simulations to address them effectively. The company engaged with ANSYS to leverage their expertise in this field, aiming to develop accurate scale-up conditions by performing steady-state and transient simulations at each scale. They sought to study parameters like velocity distributions, mixing times, and species concentrations from one scale to the other.

GEA Ecoflex India Pvt. Ltd., a part of the Global Engineering Alliance Group, operates in the competitive heat exchanger sector. The company's primary challenge was to expedite the product development process while ensuring the heat exchangers met client technical specifications for safety, space, environmental concerns, structural integrity, and international standards. The company needed to reduce prototyping time to deliver innovative products to the market first and grow its business. The heat exchangers, being a vital element in a wide range of industries, had to deliver excellent return on investment, reliable operation, and reduced maintenance costs for the companies using them.

SilMach, a young MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) design, simulation, and prototyping R&D company based in Besançon, France, faced a significant challenge in the development of their products. The prototyping of MEMS devices is an expensive process, necessitating accurate simulation before manufacturing to ensure the devices perform as designed. The complexity of these devices requires sophisticated coupled physics analysis tools for accurate prediction of their performance. The challenge was to find a solution that could handle the intricate physics involved in creating sensors and actuators within arrays and predict their performance before committing to manufacture.

Hennessy Industries, an international aftermarket wheel service manufacturer, was faced with the challenge of designing a frame for a tire-balancing machine that could balance automobile wheels in a shorter time. The new design was required to be approximately the same size, shape, and weight as the old machine. The R&D team needed to attenuate the noise generated by the frame during the start of the balance cycle so that the machine’s sensors could determine whether any imbalance existed. To achieve this, Hennessy Industries partnered with QuEST Global, a company that provides a wide range of engineering solutions.

A steel storage building located on a canal between downtown New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain was damaged during Hurricane Katrina. The insurance company claimed that the damage, where the walls were pushed outward in two areas, was water-related. As the insurance only covered wind damage, the claim was denied. TRC Companies, Inc., representing the owners of the storage building, faced the challenge of proving that the damage was caused by wind, not water. The traditional approach of applying equations relating force and wind speed would not have included information about the building shape or accounted for the air flowing through open doors inside the building. TRC determined that a more accurate simulation of the pressure forces on the building would provide more persuasive evidence that the damage was wind-related.

Steven Aguirre, the owner of Billet Designs, a small engineering firm, was faced with the challenge of balancing various aspects of his business, including product design, marketing, order fulfillment, sales, manufacturing, and general product line development. His primary task was to design a CO2 dispenser for a beverage growler, with the aim of creating an optimal product while efficiently utilizing limited resources within a typically short product development cycle. A few years ago, Aguirre had shifted his business model to outsource assembly, order fulfillment, and inventory management, allowing him to focus on product design. He had experience with popular 2-D and 3-D CAD tools, but he needed a more efficient way to create 3-D models and make changes quickly. The tools he had tried were either too cumbersome or inadequate, making speed and efficiency a significant challenge.

FMC Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. was faced with the challenge of designing subsea oil and gas equipment that could withstand high pressure and high temperature domains. The equipment had to be qualified per ASME BPVC VIII, Division 3, which requires the cumulative damage on the equipment to be below 1. The increasing depth of oil extraction meant that the structural loading requirements for subsea components were increasing, but there were also space and weight constraints on these components. To reduce over-engineering and promote value engineering, engineers needed to visualize damage distribution in each component. However, ANSYS Structural, the technology they were using, did not have a method to plot damage. The challenge was to develop a customized method using ANSYS’ scripting capabilities.

Astec Industries, a leading manufacturer of hot-mix asphalt plants and soil remediation equipment, faced several challenges in their design and manufacturing process. The company started with CAD models intended solely for manufacturing, which resulted in very complex and imperfect assemblies. They needed to quickly generate parametric studies to determine key design variables, but were constrained by demanding time scales for results. Additionally, there was a vast difference in the scale of detail on most models, further complicating the design and optimization process.

Large tractors require complex cooling systems that consist of five separate modules. Each cooling module is dedicated to one of the engine’s five different fluid systems, includes its own heat exchanger, and is additionally cooled by the main engine fan. The primary goal of the tractor is to support itself and the added extra load of any attachments it has, such as a mower or a plow. This necessitates a design effort that focuses on maximizing engine power output and efficiency of the cooling package, while also optimizing the locations of all the components within the engine compartment to provide enough air to both the engine and the cooling system modules. For CNH, this design process often only included an in-depth analysis of the individual components, for example, each of the cooling modules. There was no simple way to include the effect of component layout within the engine compartment and the distribution of airflow to each module over the entire system. The alternative used by CNH, though expensive and time-consuming, was to develop and test several prototypes to balance cooling with space requirements.

VIKING GmbH, a subsidiary of ANDREAS STIHL AG & Co. KG, is a manufacturer of gardening equipment including lawn mowers. The company is committed to continually improving the performance of its lawn mowers, specifically in terms of mowing performance and noise emission levels. However, the company faced a challenge in understanding the aerodynamics within the deck of the lawnmower. The curved, double-edged blade of the lawnmower induced a highly unsteady airflow, which resulted in vortices that periodically struck the wall of the chute, impacting both the noise emission levels and the catching performance. The fast blade rotation, unsteady pressure, and high fluctuations of the air velocity within the deck created a complex airflow that made traditional development and measurement methods almost impossible. The company needed to find a way to improve the catching performance and simultaneously meet outdoor noise emissions regulations.

Banco Products India Ltd., a leading manufacturer and supplier of equipment such as engine cooling systems and sealing gaskets, faced a significant challenge in the development of their radiators. Radiators, key components in automotive engine cooling systems, must be designed to meet a wide range of conditions due to the diversity of vehicles. The radiator's complex geometry, which includes several thin sheets with thousands of dimples in the radiator core, is required to meet cooling performance and strength requirements. This complexity made simulation difficult. Furthermore, radiator performance is usually determined by the coolant outlet temperature, and Banco designs several types of radiators to meet the cooling requirements of various vehicles. Physically testing each design was not only time-consuming but also costly.

In the competitive world of yachting, particularly in events like the America’s Cup, the smallest changes in geometry can significantly impact the performance of a boat. Team New Zealand (TNZ) was faced with the challenge of optimizing their yacht design without solely relying on physical testing. This was due to the fact that critical flows of air and water, which greatly affect performance, are invisible, making it difficult to understand the reasons behind certain performance levels. Additionally, the traditional yacht design process can be a costly and time-consuming trial-and-error process. Each design iteration often requires the construction of a prototype, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars and take months to build and test. TNZ designers were tasked with analyzing hundreds of potential designs for the most critical components to extract the maximum performance from their previous generation boats.

Motoman, a leading robotics company, faced the challenge of designing a new system, the MotoSweep O, which would mount a 6-axis robot on a boom and riser system. The system was intended to service multiple vertical and/or horizontal machines from overhead in a linear, rotary, or facing configuration. The rotating arm of the system was designed to reach all machines simultaneously, thereby freeing up significant floor space. The existing servo gallows system, used for overhead arc welding, was to be replaced with a system that could also handle material handling. The new system was intended to reduce the boom's mass, increase the overall payload, and allow a robot larger than the existing maximum of 280kg to be mounted on the boom. The team also aimed to solve the problem of backlash in the main drive assembly of the boom, which caused the boom to shake when the robot reached its program point, increasing the robot’s settling time and the MotoSweep O’s cycle time.

The designers of a luxury super yacht were faced with a significant challenge when the initial design of the vessel was approximately 300 tons above the desired weight. The high-quality super yachts are engineered to perfection, ensuring extraordinary handling in difficult sea conditions while combining maximum power with reduced emissions. To achieve this exceptional performance, the use of lightweight and high-strength materials like carbon composites is often necessary. The designers sought the expertise of ar engineers to find ways to reduce the weight of the yacht. The engineering team was tasked with investigating the use of carbon composites materials for several access doors used by the yacht crew and service members. They used ANSYS Composite PrepPost to determine the feasibility and to optimize the composites design.

NEM Energy b.v. was faced with a significant design challenge in their concentrated solar power (CSP) system. The CSP system uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate sunlight onto a small area to drive a heat engine connected to an electrical power generator. The key challenge was to increase the stiffness of the mirrors for CSP. This was crucial to ensure that as much reflected light as possible is directed to the target, called a receiver, without incurring a cost premium. Stiffness was critical because a mere 1-degree rotation error for a heliostat 380 meters away from the tower resulted in a 6.6-meter tracking error, meaning the reflected light was delivered 6.6 meters from the intended target on the tower.

Meopta offers a full range of in-house optics and photonics services. Many of Meopta’s customers are in the fast-moving semiconductor market, where precision is crucial. However, volume is also a key priority, as a feasible mass production means keeping costs low and performance high. For the designs Meopta delivers to these customers, its engineers must find the most efficient methods for optimizing product features without impacting customer profitability.

TibaRay, Inc. is a startup aiming to design the next generation of radiation therapy (RT) systems for cancer treatment. The existing RT systems face significant challenges, including collateral damage to normal organs, the need for better accuracy/focusing, motion control, and cost and accessibility issues, particularly in the developing world. TibaRay's proposed product, PHASER, is designed to address these challenges. However, the design of PHASER would not be possible without detailed and accurate engineering simulations. One of the specific challenges in existing RT systems is patient motion, which limits treatment accuracy. Although motion management is implemented in existing RT systems to some extent, PHASER aims to deliver the treatment dose so fast that the effects of motion are essentially eliminated. To achieve this, the design of novel RF components is necessary, requiring electromagnetic and thermal simulations.

Aditya Birla Science and Technology Company was facing a significant challenge in their Stable Bleaching Powder (SBP) manufacturing process. The process involved the chlorination of hydrated lime by aerating an SBP solids bed with chlorine gas. However, the company was losing approximately 60 kg/batch of solids, which comprised of products, reactants, and intermediate compounds. These losses were resulting in significant time and cost inefficiencies. The goal was to minimize these losses without making major modifications to the SBP plant. The challenge was to identify process parameters that could be altered to improve the efficiency of the process. However, being a closed-loop system, onsite physical measurements were difficult to carry out.

As the demand for offshore oil field services continues to rise, NATCO Group, Inc. was faced with the challenge of optimizing the performance of its induced gas flotation (IGF) system for customers producing oil on offshore platforms. The IGF system, which uses gas bubbles to trap oil and solids for separation from wastewater, was not as effective in vertical water treatment vessels due to their limited deck space and weight restrictions. These vertical systems often caused uneven distribution of gas bubbles, making the separation process less efficient. Furthermore, traditional physical testing methods to improve the system were costly, time-consuming, and lacked clear insight into why a design was or wasn't working.

Navatek Ltd., a leader in researching, developing, and deploying innovative, advanced ship hull designs and associated technologies, faced a significant challenge in their testing process. The traditional method of scale model testing was proving to be time-consuming, expensive, and unreliable due to scaling effects. The complexity of the physics involved in the processes, including transient, transitionally turbulent, multiphase flow with a free surface, added to the difficulty of obtaining reliable and accurate results. This situation necessitated a more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective solution for testing their ship hull designs.