This was one of the most difficult GrabCAD Challenges yet. Engineers balanced both design and technical requirements while using SimScale software to optimize their truck underrun solutions. Our winners created lighter and more attractive designs - check them out.
1st Place: Truck Underrun using SimScale for FEA by David Steinweig
David works with a military defense company and chose to enter because he loves optimizing a design to best serve its purpose, which is what this challenge was all about. His biggest challenge was getting two software packages to communicate. His SOLIDWORKS design needed to be 90% done before getting results from SimScale, which made iterating a lot more work. David hopes SimScale allows users to check rough models soon, to help save time.
2nd Place: Simscale Truck Underrun Protection Challenge by Alex Lewis
Alex is an undergraduate mechatronic engineering student in Sydney and participates in the UTS Formula SAE team. He entered this challenge because he was intrigued by the idea of SimScale's web-based FEA/CFD software. His biggest challenge was learning how to use a new simulation platform, which had a very different interface from any analysis package he used in the past. SimScale's simple geometry with basic restraints and load cases allowed Alex to iterate his design in SOLIDWORKS (which he considers the easiest CAD software for modeling a design) until he was 90% done. Then, he'd move to SimScale to check the last few iterations until he had his final design. It's interesting to see the parallels between David's and Alex's methods.
3rd Place: Truck underrun protector 2 challange by Filip Peeters
Filip is also a student. He studies electromechanical engineering and likes to design products. He believes that it isn't difficult to design an underrun protection, but that the biggest challenge lay in creating a design that is light as possible and strong enough to hold up during use. This challenge helped him get more insight into stress analysis and introduced him to SimScale software.
4th Place: URPS Alpha by Robert Kwiatowski
Robert is a design engineer who graduated from Warsaw University of Technology in Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering. He decided to enter the challenge because he has experience in stress engineering and Finite Element Method. Moreover, the SimScale platform seemed like a really nice and useful tool that he could learn. The biggest challenge Robert faced was the iterative uploading and reviewing of results because it was so time consuming. He ran into errors during meshing and had to find a good starting point for optimization. Once he did, it reduced the number of required steps to achieve satisfying results. Learning how to lead and perform weight reduction process is now a skill Robert can use in his job, which makes the experience a long-lasting success.
5th Place: Underrun Protection_Version DT-D by Deus Timbobong
Deus is a steel structural engineer and an application engineer in Indonesia. This was his second GrabCAD Challenge. He joined after seeing videos for SimScale, which made him want to try it out. Using FEA software via a standard web browser was a new experience for Deus. His biggest challenge was designing something stiff, but light and aesthetic. Many engineers can optimize a stiff or light structure, but that does not guarantee it will look cool. He pulled inspiration from nature and offered a "honeycomb" version that allows for minimal material with a very stiff structure, as well. He learned a lot from the available SimScale video tutorials and will continue to look to nature for design ideas.
Congratulations to all of our winners! Read more about 'SimScale Truck Underrun Protection Challenge.’
