From in-flight entertainment and Wi-Fi options to food choices and seating arrangements, the differentiations between one airline and another have never been as distinctive for passengers as they are today. While the quality of in-flight entertainment and food choices are certainly important, perhaps nothing can dictate a flight experience quite like the comfort of an airplane seat.
Avoid Reinventing Parts for Automotive Seats
For its latest release, Virtual Seat Solution 2016, the ESI Group has included a number of improvements to the virtual prototyping software solution.
One improvement includes the ability to reuse previously modeled components through the iteration stage. The component parameters governing these reused parts can also be changed as the final design of the seating evolves. This new guided approach streamlines the process of generating new seat concepts while preserving important design details during the development process.
Another time saver is that the software automatically updates the performance details of the seat as the engineer adds new components.
With updated certification guidelines built directly into the software, engineers can also build seat designs virtually based on set parameters without the headache of finding out after producing a physical prototype that the design won’t meet regulations.
In total, the updates add even more flexibility to the existing capabilities of the software, including simulating living space, static and thermal comfort of passengers as well as the ability to simulate in-flight vibrations.
“Virtual prototyping is a proven industrial approach to precertify the manufacturing process and performance of an innovative product, such as our Titanium seat,” said Vincent Tejedor, CTO of Expliseat. “Our experience working with the ESI Group’s Virtual Seat Solution confirms the efficiency of this solution in speeding up innovation. Virtual Seat Solution has helped us drastically reduce the development time normally required to design an innovative product and has allowed us to increase the business value of our company in record time!”
Ensuring Automotive Seats Are Up to Code with Simulation
The new release of the Virtual Seat Solution also sees improvements for the design of automotive chairs. Engineers can use the guided seat model generation tool to help define new seat concepts and reuse parts.
The simulation tool can also look into whiplash testing to ensure drivers and passengers will be safe. This whiplash testing is compatible with ChinaNCAP, EuroNCAP and JNCAP standards.
Engineers can also use a new BioRID II v3.0 dummy in their virtual prototype testing and in a new seat positioning tool to adjust the chair into configurations that meet industry standards.
To learn more about the virtual seat solution read: Driving by the Seat of Your Pants — FEA, Sensors Change Seat Shape as You Drive.