e-Xstream engineering, a unit of Hexagon's Manufacturing Intelligence division, has launched a new simulation and virtual manufacturing tool enabling users to determine the difference in production costs for polymer parts, depending on whether additive manufacturing or a conventional process is applied. The system also enables continuous improvement of virtual engineering processes by validating composite microstructure with CT scans of manufactured parts.
Additive manufacturing of composites is all the rage, because it enables the automated production of components that are stronger and lighter than those made of metal, and the use of a special treatment (e.g. a continuous fiber-reinforced polymer) for the substrate. With the latest version of Digimat software, companies can simulate the 3D printing process and calculate the total production cost of each part, including material use, labor, energy and the necessary post-processing steps.
Thanks to this new tool, an engineer can take a global view of part production and finishing processes, to determine the best process chain. It can also be used to optimize batch processes, so that as many parts as possible can be printed in parallel, increasing production capacity and reducing time-to-market. The tool can also be used in production planning to take into account total machine costs, and to amortize these costs over projected production volumes. The user visualizes this information through plots and pie charts. This makes it easy to analyze the breakdown of costs according to a scenario.
Global demand for 3D printing is expected to grow to $1.7 billion by 2030, but applications are limited due to technical challenges. As fiber orientation changes across areas of the part, this has a significant effect on mechanical performance. This information can help engineers solve quality problems and greatly improve the accuracy of performance predictions. Manufacturers now have the option of performing a CT scan of a part and importing the Raw 3D image to create a finite element model of its two-phase microstructure (e.g. in the case of a carbon fiber-reinforced polymer) in Digimat and model its behavior. By integrating this validated material model into his or her computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools, a design engineer can perform analyses that take account of variations in a manufactured part, to reduce the material used or avoid failures.
The combination of physical measurements and virtual testing also improves the accuracy of integrated material modeling engineering (ICME) when introducing a new system. Part performance can be compared with the simulated process to validate and certify the material model. CT scan validation also helps materials professionals to refine manually produced microstructure models, to improve the accuracy of future simulations.
When optimizing new manufacturing processes, users can acquire information on the part, material, 3D printer, process or physical tests, using material lifecycle management. e-Xstream engineering's Material Center software establishes a traceable, validated database of these safe material properties, so that they can be used in the design phase of a product. Lifecycle management makes it easy to document processes within multi-disciplinary teams, and to share knowledge across a company that can be re-used by authorized users.
Predicting the material behavior of a CT scan microstructure is a computationally intensive process. The analysis of complex behavior such as creep in a CT scan microstructure, for example, can take several days if only CPUs are used. By optimizing these processes for graphics processing units (GPUs), the engineer can now perform certain tasks interactively, because the results are available in a matter of minutes. Comparisons show that the time needed to analyze the stiffness of a material is reduced by 98 %. Combined with the introduction of a new command-line interface, this rapid analysis time enables Digimat finite element models to be used as part of automated, cloud-based optimization workflows on high-performance computing platforms.
When manufacturing high-performance structures, such as aeronautical components from composites, the progressive failure analysis (PFA) model makes it possible to define safety margins for a structure and make the best possible use of expensive materials and processes. The latest version of Digimat performs these complex Camanho model analyses twice as fast, enabling a parametric study to be carried out to define incorrect tolerances and increase yield.
Learn more:
www.e-xstream.com/products/digimat/whats-new-digimat-2021.1