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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.

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