DS PLM SUCCESS STORY

Blue Sky Solar Racing Places fi rst among Canadian teams with DS PLM

Overview

Challenge Crossing a continent powered are committed to demonstrating Evaluate a large number of designs only by the sun the viability of alternative energy to reduce drag and weight while Every two years, a special fi eld of cars technology and the practical benefi ts increasing power, and ultimately competes in the Panasonic World Solar of a multidisciplinary approach to optimize the . Challenge, crossing the Australian solving problems. Dassault Systèmes continent powered by nothing but the is a sponsor of the Blue Sky Solar Solution sun. Teams research, build and design Racing team. Blue Sky Solar Racing used CATIA vehicles capable of completing the and ENOVIA Digital Mock-Up (DMU) 3000 km journey from tropical Darwin in Evaluating 60 designs in a to evaluate many design iterations the Northern Territory to cosmopolitan few hours and quickly generate models for Adelaide in South Australia. computational fl uid dynamics, and The critical challenge in developing a to defi ne wiring requirements early. competitive is optimizing CATIA Composite Design was used The Blue Sky its power-to-drag ratio. The solar to optimize composite parts. Solar Racing team’s fi fth-generation panels are arrayed across the top car, Cerulean, competed in the 2007 of the body to maximize sunlight Benefi ts challenge, fi nishing fi rst among all collection. They must be oriented Canadian entries and fi fth overall in Blue Sky decreased drag by 22% directly toward the sun to increase and increased the power of the solar its class. The team, which consists of the power they generate, but this array by an impressive 4%, creating undergraduate and graduate students often increases drag, compromising one of the top cars in its class. and alumni volunteers, leveraged effi ciency. Many design variables must Dassault Systèmes Product Lifecycle be considered to optimize this tradeoff, Management (DS PLM), including including the baseline shape, track CATIA and ENOVIA Digital Mock-up width, wheelbase driver positioning (DMU), in its designs. Team members and others.

“For 2009, we plan to model the entire vehicle as a single CATIA assembly, managing all the data in ENOVIA SmarTeam, so that we can comprehensively survey opportunities for improvement before we build.”

Andreas Marouchos, Managing Director, Blue Sky Solar Racing Amy Bilton, chief aerodynamicist for that must be cut for the wires have a the 2007 car, needed to analyze many signifi cant impact on the weight and different alternatives to optimize the structural integrity of the aerobody shell design. She estimated that it would and chassis. The signal wires are also have taken about two hours to create highly sensitive to impedance, so their “We used CATIA Design Tables each design iteration by manually length must be closely controlled. to create 60 different design modifying the CAD geometry. Instead, variations in less than six hours, she developed a CATIA Design Table On the 2005 car, the electrical wiring compared to 120 hours that that incorporated each of the key was done at the very end of the would have been required using design variables. Then she simply design process. This meant that the the traditional approach.” typed in the values of each variable for mechanical engineers did not know the iterations she wished to explore. where the wiring holes would be, so Amy Bilton, Chief Aerodynamicist, CATIA automatically generated the they had to overdesign the shell and Blue Sky Solar Racing resulting models. chassis. They also had to make last- minute design changes to overcome Using a programming language impedance problems. designed for engineering applications, Bilton created a routine that read On the 2007 car, the team used the design parameters from the CATIA electrical applications, including spreadsheet. It calculated the area Electrical Library 2, to create and available for solar arrays on the place electrical components, Electrical top of the vehicle and the resulting Harness Installation 2 to bundle power. She also used a computational harnesses, and Electrical Wire Routing fl uid dynamics software program to 2 to route the wires through the calculate the drag on the CATIA solid created bundles. The CATIA electrical model. After completing each design applications made it possible to design iteration, she modifi ed the model the wire harnesses at the same time as and moved steadily toward her goal the mechanical structures. of maximizing the power-to-drag ratio. Amazingly, she generated 60 “Thanks to CATIA, the mechanical design iterations in about fi ve hours, engineering team knew in advance approximately a 96% time savings what size and where holes would be compared to conventional methods. needed to accommodate the wiring harness,” said Dmitri Stepanov, who is Wiring harness design reduces chief engineer for both the 2007 and shell and chassis weight by 3% 2009 cars. “This made it possible to Solar vehicles have a large number of optimize the design of the shell and power and signal wires. Wiring harness chassis to make them lighter.” design is critical because the holes Each time the Blue Sky engineers ergonomic workbenches to improve repositioned components, CATIA driver performance and safety. “The automatically calculated the amount of 2007 car was a two-seater, but the wire required by the new confi guration. 2009 car will be a one-seat design This made it possible to choose a that will be more challenging from an confi guration that substantially reduced ergonomic standpoint,” Marouchos the amount of wire. The software also said. “The ergonomics capabilities built “ENOVIA DMU helped us reduce calculated the length of each wire so into CATIA make it easy to defi ne a the weight of an axle assembly the engineers could easily predict its driver and manipulate him or her during by helping us better understand impedance and reposition components the design process to optimize vision, how the various parts interacted where necessary. The reductions in crush zones, and egress in the event with each other.” the weight of the shell, chassis, and of an accident. The measurements of wire provided a 3% reduction in the the driver can easily be changed to Dmitri Stepanov, Chief Engineer, total mass of the vehicle, compared determine how different people would Blue Sky Solar Racing to previous cars. In highly competitive interact with a particular design.” solar racing, a 3% reduction in mass is a signifi cant difference. The team’s experiments with CATIA on the 2007 car were so successful “CATIA Design Tables provided a that “our plan is to model all of the competitive advantage by enabling us mechanical and structural components to evaluate a large number of design of the 2009 car in CATIA,” Stepanov iterations in the limited time on hand,” said. “We already used this approach said Andreas Marouchos, managing on the axle hub of the 2007 car director of the 2007 car. “CATIA using the ENOVIA Digital Mock-up wiring harness design tools helped functionality in CATIA, and it allowed us reduce the weight of the vehicle. us to reduce weight and the number of CATIA Composite Design helped parts.” DMU allows users to see parts reduce the weight and improve the in an assembly to better understand margin of safety of our composite their relationships and identify potential parts. These improvements helped improvements. us fi nish the World Solar Challenge in fi fth place in our class and fi rst among “By viewing a 3D master model, six Canadian competitors.” we will be able to achieve similar savings throughout the entire vehicle,” Building on success with more Stepanov said. To build a master DS PLM solutions model of the entire car will require In the 2009 car currently in signifi cant product data management development, Blue Sky Solar Racing capabilities, however, so the Blue Sky plans to increase its use of the CATIA team is adding ENOVIA SmarTeam to its design arsenal for the 2009 car. ENOVIA SmarTeam will control the someone makes a change to the wrong “The CATIA electrical applications CAD and related product data fi les, version of a fi le. We only have the time enabled us to defi ne the wiring preserving all the native CATIA links and money to build one vehicle, and requirements in the early stages and references, in a secure electronic CATIA and ENOVIA SmarTeam, along of the design process, making it vault that will eliminate the risk of with our analysis tools, are ensuring possible to reduce the weight of unauthorized modifi cation or accidental that this one vehicle is the best we can the shell and chassis by 3%.” deletion. possibly build.” Dmitri Stepanov, Chief Engineer, ENOVIA SmarTeam will manage and Blue Sky Solar Racing store all of the versions and variations studied by the designers and allow multiple designers to simultaneously work on the same parts or related parts with full knowledge of what their teammates are doing, updating modifi cations “on the fl y” to avoid any inadvertent loss of edits. ENOVIA SmarTeam also will allow the team to create a hierarchical product structure representing the entire car as a single digital model, which will help identify and exploit additional opportunities for design improvement.

“The master model will help coordinate the work of our team of designers, who are by necessity working in different places at different times,” Stepanov said. “We are expecting to see substantial time savings by eliminating time spent searching for the right version of a design fi le and time spent correcting errors, such as when

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CATIA®, DELMIA®, ENOVIA®, SIMULIA®, Images courtesy of Blue Sky Solar Racing. For more information or to SolidWorks® and 3DVIA® are registered © Copyright Dassault Systèmes 2008. contact a sales representative, trademarks of Dassault Systèmes or its All Rights Reserved. visit www.3ds.com/contacts subsidiaries in the US and/or other countries. RF_F_LJXO2_EN_200804 For more information on Blue Sky Solar Racing, visit www.blueskysolar.utoronto.ca