ALPHA MAGAZINE | Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation

Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation Brings Design and Analysis Together

A market leader in the rolling stock process in design and structural analy- industry for short and long haul, pas- Use of MSC.Software sis. They had established a Center of senger and freight rail transportation, Competencies (CoC) for analysis at Bombardier Transportation (Quebec, Campus License Kalmar, Sweden. When Bombardier Canada and Berlin, Germany) entered System key to project took over, they endorsed the Center of the mass transit market in 1974 with a Competencies concept and appointed contract for the Montreal metro. Over industry standards with innovative the manager of the CoC, Micko the years, Bombardier Transportation products and new vehicle concepts. In Björck, to be responsible for the CoC has grown through internally generat- 1999 DaimlerChrysler became sole for the whole company. Before the ed expansion and the acquisition of shareholder of Adtranz and in 2001 acquisition, the CoC at Adtranz had other companies with proven designs, sold the company to Bombardier already begun to develop a global pres- know-how and technologies. Along Transportation. ence and could serve as a template for with providing complete rail trans- the whole of the Bombardier The acquisition of Adtranz by portation systems, the company also Transportation organization with Bombardier Transportation created a manufactures locomotives, freight cars, regard to harmonizing the software truly global company for the design, propulsion and controls, and provides products in use and how the CoC was manufacture, and delivery of railway signaling equipment and systems. to interact with the divisions. Björck is vehicles and services. By pooling their now responsible for 140 analysis engi- In 1996, through the merger of AEG complementary capabilities, Bombardier neers spread over 34 sites worldwide. and ABB Transportation, a company Transportation is uniquely positioned to called Adtranz was created as a joint provide innovative solutions to their “The Adtranz harmonization was venture between Daimler-Benz (now customers’ requirements. almost completed regarding structural DaimlerChrysler) and ABB. The con- mechanics,” says Björck. “We had only stituent companies of Adtranz had Center of Competencies a few sites left to convert. After the more than 150 years of experience in Prior to the acquisition by Bombardier acquisition, my views on harmoniza- the railway field and regularly set Transportation, Adtranz was nearing tion had not changed – they were as the end of a software ‘harmonization’ relevant for the new company as they Dr. Charles Clarke is a CAD/CAM consultant and writer based in the United Kingdom.

4 alpha.mscsoftware.com Volume 1 | Winter 2003 ALPHA MAGAZINE | Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation were for Adtranz. I suggested that we “We tend to post-process the analytical should continue with what we had runs using MSC.Patran and home- started at Adtranz. I showed grown post-processors,” says Björck. Bombardier the benefits of the “Our own post-processors are used MSC.Software Campus License sys- mainly for fatigue and for sorting load tem, and at the same time it became cases. For a normal carbody there are clear that MSC.Software and about 100 load cases, and maybe IBM/Dassault Systemes had developed 1,000 components – our own post- a closer relationship. As CATIA was processors are used to sort out this vast the principal CAD tool in use in the amount of data and to seek out the former Bombardier, it was only logical problem areas. This is more a sorting to standardize on MSC.Software prod- process than a graphical display ucts and CATIA.” process. The output is a sorted list, Computer-aided design (CAD) verifi- which highlights areas for further cation by simulation and analysis is an investigation. Each country has their integral part of every aspect of vehicle own requirements with regard to design at Bombardier. Although the reporting procedures for regulatory company is currently using CATIA V4 authorities, so there is no such thing as in production, there is a strategy to a standard report structure.” move to CATIA V5 during 2004. For While CATIA is the primary CAD simulation and analysis needs, tool at Bombardier, the kind of geom- Bombardier engineers and designers etry imported from CATIA is different have flexible access to MSC.Software’s from site to site. Some sites don’t even portfolio of Virtual Product have access to CATIA yet and generate Development (VPD) tools, including the geometry for the analysis them- MSC.Patran, MSC.Nastran, scope of a typical train project is diffi- selves using the pre-processors. MSC.Marc, MSC.Construct, cult. Analysis for each new series prod- Bombardier has different ways of fil- MSC.Dytran, and MSC.Fatigue, uct usually requires five to 15 analysts tering the CATIA data to accommo- through MSC.Software’s VPD Campus and takes about 12 years, depending date the different analyses. Solid geom- License system. This token-based soft- on the size of the project. Many differ- etry is fairly straightforward – the ware licensing method provides all the ent customer requirements and the CATIA model can be imported direct- appropriate software tools whenever variety of prevailing national and inter- ly and meshed with standard meshing they are needed (see sidebar on page 7). national standards, covering such crite- tools. When a mid-surface model is ria as track gauges, means there is usu- “Without question, the most impor- required, then either the analyst pro- ally very little design ‘carry-over’ tant feature of the MSC.Software offer duces it or Bombardier has another between different projects. for us is the Campus License system, process at some sites where the design- which gives us total flexibility in the “At Bombardier we do all sorts of dif- er makes a copy of the CAD model way we use our software,” says Björck. ferent analyses on a rail product,” and transforms it into a mid-surface “The co-operation between explains Björck. “Among these are nor- model for the analyst. This ensures IBM/Dassault and MSC.Software is mal analyses to ensure that stresses and congruent surfaces for the analysis. It also very important to us. We always deformations are kept within reason- also allows small details that would need good interfaces and I’m sure the able limits, as well as buckling, eigen- upset the meshing algorithms, such as new relationship with MSC.Software frequency, crash, fatigue and thermal holes and small radii, to be removed will bring more in that regard. analysis. We also have internal require- without compromising the master MSC.Software products are easy to use; ments for handling the carbodies dur- CAD model. the analysts like the interface and are ing production, for example, lifting While most sites use MSC.Patran for very comfortable using the system.” stresses. There are a number of inter- meshing, there are still some sites national and national standards with using the CATIA meshing module, Linking Design and Analysis which we have to comply.” which they prefer for their purposes. Design and analysis are very closely Bombardier has been doing analysis for Meshing is another area that linked at Bombardier. Designers and as long as analysis software has existed, Bombardier is hoping will benefit analysts interact on a daily basis from and has built up considerable knowl- from the cooperation between the very early stages of design. On edge and experience that is continual- MSC.Software and IBM/Dassault and projects with very experienced design- lyused to improve their designs. its adoption of the CATIA V5 archi- ers, the analysts’ task is much simpler Output from one analysis tool is regu- tecture as its common platform for the since many of the load cases are satis- larly used as input for another. simulation environment of the future. factory in the first design loop. In other MSC.Nastran results are post-processed cases, the analysts guide the designers with MSC.Patran, and Bombardier uses Benefits of Harmonization more closely to get a feasible design. the static results as input to their own “Even though it’s difficult to gauge the Because of the variety and complexity in-house fatigue tools. benefits in quantitative terms from the of rail projects, describing the full way we use MSC’s software, the mere

alpha.mscsoftware.com Volume 1 | Winter 2003 5 ALPHA MAGAZINE | Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation act of harmonizing the software across fatigue testing, they rarely test full-scale could then just specify the spot weld all our sites means that collaboration complete vehicles, but they do test par- and the software would sort out the both within and between the divisions ticular components, especially bogies, details, sending the various analytical is much easier and the possibilities to in order to verify analysis results, new parameters of the weld to MSC.Patran. share work and components are signifi- designs and/or methods. This testing Similarly, for normal fusion welds, the cantly increased,” says Björck. “This runs in the background as analysis con- appropriate parameters need to be sent collaboration also extends to human tinues. A combination of experience to MSC.Patran to eliminate the need resources. If everyone is using the same and their analyses highlights critical for manual input. This is an important software, analysts can move around to components or areas that could poten- quality issue for the future. respond to increasing workloads in dif- tially cause fatigue problems. In addi- At present, Bombardier is concentrat- ferent locations. By having a flexible tion, each new product series is moni- ing on completing the harmonization analytical human resource pool, tored throughout its life to measure project. The CoC is setting standards Bombardier can, for example, reduce and document its fatigue response. and issuing guidelines and recommen- the number of contractors they require Bombardier already has significant dations for analytical procedures and from time to time. It also allows us to ‘knowledge capture’ in their fatigue software at all Bombardier sites. rotate analysts regularly to give them a tools and is looking to exploit the Harmonization is expected to be com- broader work experience. Due to this knowledgeware functionality in pleted by mid-2004. flexible approach, Bombardier can save CATIA to extend their knowledge- between 10 and 20 contractors per year. “We are very satisfied that with based engineering. There are internal MSC.Software products we have made This represents about 10 percent of the standards for spot welding when the human resource budget for analysts.” the right choice of CAE software,” said car bodies are made from stainless Björck. “And the harmonization of the The increased collaboration and com- steel. There are different requirements software across all divisions is starting to munication between engineers and for spot welding depending on the rel- yield significant business benefits. The analysts has had a direct bearing on ative thicknesses of the components to software provides us with an opportuni- quality. Because of the greater inter- be welded – the size and spacing of the ty to make sure that the designs fulfill divisional involvement and discussion welds are critical parameters. It would all the requirements before we start to arising from the harmonization exer- be ideal if this kind of information was make the first unit.” α cise, Bombardier has discovered some captured in CATIA. The designer anomalies in certain analytical proce- dures at some sites. And as they con- tinue to roll out the software to addi- tional sites, harmonizing these proce- dures is an additional benefit. Because Bombardier is using numerical methods and simulating testing in the computer, the company has been able to reduce the number and sometimes the size of physical prototype tests. “We do physical impact tests on the plastic fronts of the rail car bodies by shooting missiles made from steel cubes at the vehicles,” says Björck. “If you can simulate this, most of the physical testing is not necessary. Crash testing is another example of where we, thanks to simulation, rarely do full-scale testing these days – we only do it occasionally to verify the analysis.” Next Phase: Fatigue Bombardier plans to harmonize fatigue tools in another phase of the project. One of the impediments to fatigue har- monization is the fact that they have to work with so many different interna- tional and national standards. By doing analysis early in the project, Bombardier is able to eliminate a sig- nificant amount of physical testing. In

6 alpha.mscsoftware.com Volume 1 | Winter 2003 ALPHA MAGAZINE | Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation

Design Acceleration, Time and Cost Savings, Increased Collaboration are Benefits of Innovative VPD Campus License System

MSC.Software’s innovative token-based MSC.Software offers two basic methods MSC.Acumen, MSC.Akusmod, Virtual Product Development (VPD) of providing software – the traditional MSC.AMS, MSC.Flightloads, Campus License System provides easy ‘per seat’ method and the VPD Campus MSC.SuperModel, MSC.SuperForm, access to the company’s world-class suite License token-based method. In the tra- MSC.Explore, MSC.AFEA Enterprise, of simulation technology tools. Tailored ditional method, one software sale and MSC.FEA Enterprise. The 2003 to each unique environment to maxi- equals one seat/license of that product. release of MSC.ADAMS has been fully mize productivity and stretch engineer- Two seats allow for two simultaneous integrated into the VPD Campus ing budgets, the VPD Campus License uses of that software solution. If a dif- License System. In addition, much of the System provides the most effective and ferent software solution is needed, a seat MSC.visualNastran V5i product line – efficient implementation of customers’ or seats of the new software solution including both structural solutions and investment in VPD. must be purchased. Dynamic Designer – are now available MSC.Software first brought the flexi- In the token-based method, a customer through the system. bility of a token-based software licens- purchases a pool of tokens. Tokens are “Eurocopter has been using ing system to enterprise customers in checked out from the pool and are used MSC.Nastran for more than 30 years, the mid-1990s. Since inception, more to access and run a full range of and we are very happy to now imple- than 150 of the company’s worldwide MSC.Software’s computer-aided engi- ment the VPD Campus License enterprise customers have enjoyed the neering solutions. Each individual prod- System,” says Roland Bubl of the flexibility and cost savings offered uct feature requires a certain number of Eurocopter Group, the world’s largest under this system. In February 2003, tokens to run. After each use, the tokens helicopter manufacturer. “This will MSC.Software introduced further are returned to the pool for other use. If allow us to reduce costs and broaden innovations to the campus system, all the tokens are in use, a batch request the use of MSC.Software’s products in making it available to all customers by will go into a queue or an interactive all of our German subsidiaries, therefore removing the minimum investment request can be made so that the user may providing a streamlined development previously required for participation in wait for available tokens on a first- process and immediate access to soft- the program. come/first-served basis. There are many ware improvements.” “The VPD Campus License System ways in which the customer can manage The Boeing Company, which uses allows customers to use our software the use of tokens – by product, by proj- MSC.Software VPD software through- products at any time, across develop- ect, or other. out the company to develop and main- ment sites around the world,” says Bob The types of products available under the tain its products, recently signed a mile- Ryan, executive vice president, VPD Campus License System include: stone corporate agreement with MSC.Software. “By helping engineering • Unrestricted, unlimited-use prod- MSC.Software for a 70,000-token VPD teams work with the same tools, results ucts —These are MSC.Software’s inter- Campus License. The Boeing Campus and data, the VPD Campus License nally developed software solutions that System will be implemented enterprise- System accelerates the design process are available to all VPD Campus wide throughout North America. and reduces the time and cost of prod- License customers to use at any time or Ryan notes that all types of companies uct development.” as often as needed. There are no restric- can mature their use of VPD through a “Butler’s project engineering outsourc- tions in usage frequency or number of campus license. “Whether it’s a large- ing services help clients save money, seats (simultaneous checkouts) for these scale global enterprise, a small- or medi- and our investment in state-of-the-art products as long as there are enough um-size company with tight budgets tools such as the VPD Campus License tokens to draw from. and heavy VPD needs, or a consulting enables us to deliver great value,” says • Standard and premium optional firm that can’t invest in outright per- Edward M. Kopko, chairman and CEO products — These are software prod- seat purchases, the campus license sys- of Butler International, a leading ucts that depend on the technology of tem offers a flexible, scalable, cost-effec- provider of TechOutsourcing services. third-party companies and require a tive way to take advantage of the full “The MSC.Software tools, which are different cost structure. breadth of MSC.Software’s comprehen- an industry standard for aerospace, sive portfolio of simulation software,” defense, heavy equipment and automo- Currently, there are approximately 250 he says. tive, provide our clients access to tools different software solutions and features available under the VPD Campus For more information about the VPD that are best-in-class, enabling them to Campus License System, call your local more fully utilize our design centers as License System, including MSC.Nastran, MSC.Nastran Toolkit, MSC.Marc MSC.Software office or visit extensions of their own in order to http://www.campus.mscsoftware.com. α improve productivity and reduce time- (including Marc Mentat), MSC.Patran, to-market.” MSC.Dytran, MSC.Mvision, MSC.Enterprise Mvision (and Mvision Databanks), MSC.GS-Mesher,

alpha.mscsoftware.com Volume 1 | Winter 2003 7