HyperWorks Improves Development Processes in Automotive Industry

In 2008 PWO Germany (Progress-Werk Oberkirch AG) had to develop and produce a new steel made automotive cross car beam (CCB) for the dash board of a new car. PWO received the CAD model, the design space definition and other pre-defined standards of the component from the customer and developed and produced the fitting cross beam based on this information. PWO used the HyperWorks Suite to develop the component. HyperMesh was used to transfer the CAD model into a FEA model, which was then used to run dedicated analysis and simulation tasks. To fulfill the requirements for crash and modal analysis, the company used OptiStruct to optimize the component, RADIOSS and other external solver to run the calculations and HyperView for the post processing. HyperForm was used to check the production feasibility of the individual components and for metal forming simulation tasks. It was important for PWO to have a software suite available that could cover all simulation tasks within one graphical user interface and licensing system.