Siemens Digital Industries Software has submitted this post.

Written by Rahul Garg, Vice President for Industrial Machinery & SMB Program at Siemens Digital Industries Software

Digital transformation is changing factories and plants worldwide, by showing how to innovate in response to changing customer demands, the adoption of new technology and global competition. This dynamic is driving the need for more intelligent, flexible, configurable and automated industrial machinery equipment. Industrial machinery companies must develop new design practices to keep pace with the growing complexity of modern machines.  

A connected digital thread assists to automate sharing information between design teams, analysts, production test teams and service engineers. This process lets teams evaluate the capabilities and limitations of product variations efficiently. An intelligent performance engineering (IPE) solution focuses on simulation improvements, design and connectivity for machine builders. This can be done by applying multiphysics simulation, to balance multi-attribute engineering by delivering a broad range of physics and disciplines under one umbrella—the focus of this article.

Multiphysics Simulation Addresses Complex Products

When applying new materials and methods to manufacturing, it increases product complexity. However, the benefits are significant: products are lighter, smaller and more customizable to meet consumer demands. Multiphysics simulations enable the machine builders to virtually explore the real-world physical interactions that complex products encounter and tracks interactive data of product performance, safety and longevity.

In addition, it measures the interactions of fluid force performance, thermal effects, structural integrity and electromagnetic radiation. Isolating these forces individually and examining them can deliver inaccurate predictions of product behavior. So, it is ideal to consider all loads simultaneously during real usage simulation. This is a global challenge, as digital transformation addresses changing customer demands and adopts new technologies.

Improve Design Choices Using Simulation Tools

A crucial aspect of designing new industrial equipment, or modifying existing designs, lies in validating the performance before the machine reaches the customer. Fixing problems during the design phase is less costly than addressing them in product development. Therefore, adopting digital simulation and analysis tools allows original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to understand how design choices affect a component, device or machine's performance and failures. 

There are manual handoffs between the design and simulation processes. So, designers use design level simulation that provides a baseline assessment of a project to determine whether it is complete or needs advanced simulation. Equipment manufacturers are delivering machines with faster cycle rates and compressed delivery schedules, so teams are driven to perform advanced simulation upfront. Also, power errors and increased interdependence between multiple forces is a better prediction of machine behavior, thus not limited to one area. This dynamic is often the result of heat generation while the machine is operating and subsequent vibrations that result from heat displacement.

Benefits of Multiphysics Simulation

A key part of IPE and multiphysics simulation is the ability to reduce the need for testing and physical prototyping. The objective is to improve the overall speed for delivering a final design. As higher fidelity modeling integrates into design organization, it improves collaboration between experts, permitting each to view their domain cohesively. Therefore, a machine simulation is not merely under one environment but operating across all the environments worth consideration. Consequently, multiphysics unites the relevant experts who are addressing end-customer needs and dealing with unexpected discoveries.

These collaborations extend beyond the actual manufacturing environment, where multi-physics simulation helps OEMs and their broader supplier network connect data and act smarter. As a comprehensive digital twin is built, there is an analysis from small components up to the entire machine—evaluating explicit characteristics. It is necessary that these components work within the context and implementation of a specific machine. Therefore, collaboration is critical when working across multiple organizations, integrating designers, analysts and live data to enable OEMs to adopt better analysis practices. Consequently, machine performance improves while ensuring safety, reliability and cost-effectiveness.

Case Study in Multiphysics Simulation Connectivity

Connected data fosters collaboration between multiple teams and disciplines. IPE leverages multiphysics simulation technology to achieve this relationship. Therefore, simulation and multi-domain collaboration provide concurrent performance. A prime case study represents the multiphysics experience conclusively, addressing product complexity, performance, environmental conditions and other related factors to meet customer demands and maintain product and machine integrity.

Picanol is a world leader in textile manufacturing machines, producing some of the best weaving machines for the fabrics we wear and use daily. They develop highly complex machines that address diverse needs and fabrics, including cotton, silk, jute bags, fiberglass material draperies, upholsteries and car seats. The fluctuating needs of end customers in this market require these machines to be compliant with their performance and speed requests. Therefore, it is essential to maintain the entire weaving machine's structural integrity, vibration and thermal concentrations.

An example of this would be when a roller that imposes a pattern on fabric or paper is subject to thermal contact and rotational forces. If the validation only considers contact stress but ignores thermal load, it might create disastrous problems. An optimum multiphysics simulation approach analyzes issues individually and feeds the results back as input for future simulations. By examining thousands of possible solutions with minimum modification to the physical geometry, the best answer conclusively will satisfy the thermal needs of the fabric behavior’s life and vibration simultaneously. Fabric behaves differently under changing vibrations and thermal conditions.

Consequently, it is essential to manage the mechanics by considering extreme kinetic forces and high-speed movement during fabric delivery. Multiphysics simulation provides the ability to determine the optimum methods to address these challenges, including speed, thermal and vibration needs, using innovative tools and capabilities. 

Picanol enhanced their weaving productivity by over 15 percent, significantly reducing noise and vibration while discovering new techniques of creating machine driver mechanisms. They also saw the fatigue life of repair parts increase, eliminating the need to build prototypes that would have been necessary without multiphysics simulation technologies.

This case study spotlights the interdependencies and benefits of effective simulation. It can be an intimidating mission to design, validate and manage modern manufacturing and assembly operations without considering the relationship between structural vibration and thermal. Both simulation and testing are essential to providing a holistic approach.

Simulation and Testing

The grouping of simulation and testing provides a significant competitive advantage that is tremendously effective in design validation. The process involves performing the simulation for testing, where the results provide a helpful indication for knowing the physical sensor placements. After possessing the physical sensor measurements, you apply this data to the digital twin to validate it, which correlates the results from reality into a numerical model. 

There are several measurement attributes in the machine performance, including acceleration or noise force. However, other parts possess areas unattainable to sensors, such as a temperature working part. So, the virtual sensor results are gained from the simulation model, combining the real measurement results to synchronize the physical measurement with the running simulation. In this case, it is measured from the digital twin, providing output from a specific point in the model, representing the evolution of a certain characteristic over time. This function is synchronized with the physical measurement to ascertain the temperature's value at a specific point while varying the acceleration.

This holistic approach of simulation and testing provides a competitive advantage for a machine builder through a comprehensive top-class suite of validation.

Validation Tools are Essential

The machinery industry requires complex machines for new materials and manufacturing intricate products, demanding builders to use innovative technologies, including IPE expertise to validate and perform analysis practices in the field. 

IPE and multiphysics simulations enable the customer to explore the real-world physical interaction that complex products encounter. This process impacts product performance, safety, longevity, fluid forces, thermal effects, structural integrity and electromagnetic radiation performance. When isolating these forces and examining them separately, the result is not always an accurate prediction of product behavior. Therefore, it is vital to consider all loads simultaneously during the real usage simulation, which IPE provides.

Multiphysics simulation reduces the need for testing and physical prototyping, to improve delivery speed. Furthermore, it provides a collaboration with experts to address the end-customer needs and the accompanying results. Industrial machinery is a highly competitive field with dynamic innovations requiring the software and tools to exceed customer expectations. 

Siemens Digital Industries Software drives the transformation to enable a digital enterprise, where engineering, manufacturing and electronics design meet with the Xcelerator portfolio. Xcelerator is a comprehensive, integrated portfolio of software, services and an application development platform, which accelerates businesses' transformation into digital enterprises. It unlocks a powerful industrial network effect—essential requirements to leverage complexity as a competitive advantage, no matter the industry or company, to transition seamlessly to create tomorrow's complex, efficient machines.

About the Author

Rahul Garg is the Vice President for Industrial Machinery & SMB Program, responsible for defining and delivering key strategic initiatives and solutions and global business development. He and his team are responsible for identifying key initiatives and developing solutions for the industry while working closely with industry leading customers and providing thought leadership on new and emerging issues faced by the machinery industry. Rahul’s experience and insight are derived from a 25-year career delivering software-based solutions for product engineering and manufacturing innovation for the global manufacturing industry, spanning a career in R&D to program management, sales and P&L management and having focused exclusively on the industrial machinery and heavy equipment industry since 2007.