Unlocking the Potential for Composites in the Automotive Industry

Composites are being used extensively in the manufacture of formula one racecars and high-performance automobiles because of their desirable weight, performance and strength properties. Today’s advanced composite materials offer dramatic opportunities for producing automobiles that are more fuel-efficient, corrosion-resistant, innovative, durable and easier to maintain than metal structures. However, the real potential for composites has not yet been realized for production automobiles largely because engineers face critical design and manufacturing risks when creating highly-engineered composite parts—such as design errors, high manufacturing costs and increased cycle times.

To reduce these risks, more and more organizations are turning to VISTAGY’s leading FiberSIM® specialized engineering software to help them more efficiently, accurately and cost-effectively design and manufacture the most complex composite parts.

FiberSIM has grown to be the world’s leading software for the composites industry. FiberSIM is a suite of software tools, integrated into major commercial 3D CAD software systems, that reduces the cost and time required to develop composite parts by automating many preliminary design tasks while accommodating multiple manufacturing processes. This specialized engineering environment supports all aspects of composite design from laminate definition, producibility analysis, and generation of flat patterns to sharing design data with the manufacturing floor. FiberSIM enables engineers to:

• Capture non-geometric composites data and associate it with geometry in the 3D CAD model for a truly complete digital product definition;
• Obtain feedback, discover design issues and make changes early to minimize costs;
• Assess producibility and generate documentation and properties for analysis;
• Automate manufacturing processes specific to the composites industry;
• Reduce cycle times and time-to-market.

Click here for more information about the suite of FiberSIM composite software.

To read about our customers’ success using FiberSIM, please click here.