High Performance Automobiles

Unlocking the Potential of Composites in High Performance Automobiles

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 lighter weight, more fuel-efficient, innovative, durable, and easier to maintain than metal structures. However, with only a 16-week period to build a car, Formula One teams must also be able to continuously reduce the product development cycle time, enhance the precision of composite part designs, and increase the manufacturability of parts.

To reduce the weight of the automobile and quicken the pace of product development, more organizations are turning to Vistagy’s leading Fibersim™ composites engineering software to help them accurately, efficiently, and cost-effectively design and manufacture the most complex composite parts.

For instance, Lotus Renault GP (formerly Renault F1 Team) has used Fibersim to develop a variety of key composite components for almost a decade—including the chassis, gear box, side pod, and double diffuser (floor)—leading its senior CAE engineer to comment, “There’s a constant battle in F1 to find ways to design and manufacture parts better and faster. Our experience with Fibersim on the development of the composite diffuser once again demonstrated just how critical the software is to our efforts to meet our deadlines and put the best car possible on the starting grid.”

Fibersim has grown to be the world’s leading software for the composites industry. Fibersim is an industry-specific suite of software, which is 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.