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Press Release, Sheffield, UK, January 2010
Safe Technology is delighted to announce Professor Norman Dowling as the keynote speaker for the 5th fe-safe™ User Group Meeting, 2010
Prof Dowling is renowned in the field of fatigue theory and practice; in graduate education, in work at Westinghouse Research Laboratories and in teaching and research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, he has worked in the area of fatigue, fracture and deformation of engineering materials and components.
He has published numerous papers and reports in these areas and his respected book, Mechanical Behavior of Materials, has been widely adopted as an engineering textbook and is used extensively by practicing engineers. Professor Dowling is a member of the ASME Committee E8 on Fatigue and Fracture and of the SAE Fatigue Design and Evaluation Committee. In 1990 he received an ASTM Award of Merit and honorary title of Fellow of the ASTM. In 2009 he was awarded the endowed position of Frank Maher Professor of Engineering at Virginia Tech.
Professor Dowling’s keynote presentation will address Mean Stress Effects in Stress-life and Strain-life Fatigue.
"I am honoured that Professor Dowling has agreed to speak at our 2010 User Group Meeting. I have always followed his prestigious work in the field with interest and am a great admirer of his papers and reference book." John Draper, CEO Safe Technology Ltd.
The fe-safe™ UGM is a highly respected event that brings together leading fatigue specialists and fe-saf™e users from around the world. We will be offering a valuable day of presentations from customers and Safe Technology’s specialist engineers, that educate and encourage designers and analysts to use modern fatigue analysis and design simulation methods in order to meet increasing industrial demands.
This year, the meeting will again offer a day of papers looking at fatigue analysis theory and the application of fe-safe™ across a broad range of industries, applications and research areas, with workshops on topics including: Vibration Fatigue; TMF; Weld fatigue and Verity&reag; in fe-safe™; macro development and batch job coding; analysis of PSDs in fatigue analysis. These small group workshops are aimed at providing a more informal environment to stimulate discussion.
The User Group Meeting will be held at The Management Education Center, Michigan State University, Troy, Michigan on Wednesday 9th June, with a day of workshops following on Thursday 10th June.
For further information see the User Group Meeting 2010 page.
Register for these events using the Booking Form
If you would like to join a distinguished group of fatigue experts and present at this noteworthy event send your paper title or abstract to: Stephanie Wood
Press Release, Sheffield, UK, January 2010
Race car engineering specialists Pratt & Miller used a combination of software from Safe Technology Limited and its partner ANSYS to redesign a cracked brake pedal face. The team used ANSYS® engineering simulation products and fe-safe™ fatigue analysis technology to identify a solution that strengthened the critical part without excessive weight or compromising on race performance. The open architecture of ANSYS technology easily combined with the advanced fatigue analysis capabilities of fe-safe™, made the analysis process seamless, enabling Pratt & Miller to quickly identify an optimal redesign that met stringent fatigue life targets.
In world-class auto racing, mechanics often modify the car’s brake pedal face to comply with driver preference. Moving the pedal off center introduces a significant twisting moment — a situation that induces stresses and can lead to material fatigue. Pratt & Miller Engineering, a force in motorsports and high-level engineering, discovered that one of its race cars prematurely showed small cracks on the brake pedal faces. The crack started near the pivot pin, leading engineers to realize that mechanics were repositioning the pedal face. As the pedal face was moved further and further off center, the resulting twisting moment resulted in a high-stress location at the crack. “This critical component clearly needed to be redesigned. Simply over-engineering a part really is not an option in motorsports with weight such a vital consideration; we have to run very close to the limit on our parts because weight costs speed, lap times and ultimately the race. Simulation was key to the solution in this case," said Gary Latham, Design Office Manager, Pratt & Miller Engineering.
For the re-design, Pratt & Miller’s goal was to greatly increase the component’s fatigue life without compromising on race performance. The team compared various design alternatives within the ANSYS&reag; Workbench™ environment, then parameterized the pedal in a CAD package with the rib thickness and fillet size as variables. ANSYS software was instrumental in defining the lightest possible design without exceeding the material limits. The fe-safe™ fatigue analysis clearly showed where the component needed to be strengthened. fe-safe™ also determined how much the stresses must be changed and how much material must be added — and where — to achieve the target design life of over 1 million cycles. The new design is now in production and back on the race track.
“An adaptive software architecture is mandatory for today’s world of engineering design and development. Customers bring a variety of CAD, PLM, in-house codes and other point solutions to their overall development process,” said Dipankar Choudhury, Vice President of Corporate Product Strategy and Planning at ANSYS, Inc. “ANSYS software is intentionally open and flexible, designed so it can interoperate within the broader engineering simulation ecosystem. So ANSYS works with a number of partners, such as Safe Technology, to extend efficiency and functionality. Pratt & Miller leveraged this functionality, adapting it to achieve a winning solution.”
Press Release, Sheffield, UK, 2 November 2009
“With its ability to accurately predict fatigue life from measured strain data, safe4fatigue™ has proven to be a powerful ally to fe-safe™ and our overall fatigue process.”
- Bill Moser (Sr. Specialist) VPD Technology, Applied Research of Caterpillar Product Development Centre Of Excellence.
Caterpillar uses a wide range of techniques to develop powerful, fuel-efficient and reliable engines. Real-world engineering is rarely as simple as: design, analyze, test, manufacture. A real opportunity for innovation lies in integrating and understanding how simulation and test correlate, and determining how to best predict real-world behaviour.
The genesis of the new-design process at Caterpillar is heavily computer-aided, with an integrated CAD and FEA process since the early 1990s. In 2002, Caterpillar selected Sheffield based Safe Technology’s fe-safe™ software for fatigue life prediction and it is now an integral part of their overall design process.
In addition, Caterpillar employs a number of other methods to improve and support existing designs in the field. An example of this involved a piston experiencing a few field failures somewhat earlier than anticipated. The original fatigue prediction for this component had only involved hand calculations. This was a good opportunity to use a test-based process and Caterpillar engineers used the advanced fatigue analysis and signal processing module in fe-safe™, safe4fatigue™, measuring strains to predict fatigue life.
Press Release, Sheffield, UK, 2 November 2009
“The use of fe-safe™ software has improved our specific knowledge and confidence in the Single Spring Isolator (SSI) coupling and our fatigue prediction and related testing procedures in general.”
- Mike Otto, Senior Engineering Specialist, Eaton Corporation.
In the past, superchargers have been known to produce noise. One source of noise stems from the pressure pulsations that occur as the lobes of the pump mesh and un-mesh during boosted operation. Another source of noise occurs during un-boosted operation, e.g. when the car is stopped and the engine is idling. In this case, vibrations produced by the normal combustion of the engine can be transferred through the belt and cause gear rattle in the supercharger. In a race setting, these various noises are at most a nuisance, but in passenger cars they can be perceived as a lack of quality or perhaps even a more significant problem with the engine itself.
To meet these challenges, Eaton has invested considerable engineering resources to develop the world’s quietest and most reliable superchargers, and in doing so, has realized innovations in both reducing the original sources of noise and improving noise isolation.
Press Release, Sheffield, UK, 24 June 2009
Learn from the experts how to save money, materials, time and testing costs by adopting modern, accurate methods of metal fatigue analysis in your industry!
Safe Technology will be visiting Texas on 20-24 July to present a week of seminars and classes in Houston.
These events are aimed at design and test engineers responsible for product durability in the oil and gas, offshore/onshore structures, power generation, ground vehicle, aerospace and manufacturing industries. Whatever your interest in durability, fatigue or modern methods of fatigue analysis, your questions will be addressed!
Safe Technology Ltd is a technical leader in the design and development of fatigue analysis software. Specializing solely in fatigue from FEA, we are dedicated to pushing the boundaries of durability analysis software to bring designers unrivalled new capabilities and levels of accuracy for both routine and sophisticated applications. We develop and sell fe-safe™ - the technically advanced fatigue analysis software suite for FEA models. fe-safe&tade; incorporates the most sophisticated fatigue analysis technology available in commercial software.
Course presenter and Safe Technology CEO, John Draper, has over 25 years experience in fatigue design and fatigue life assessment. He is a recognized authority in the industry, and a regular presenter at conferences and seminars worldwide. He is author of the recently published, Modern Metal Fatigue Analysis, which also forms the basis of the student notes for attendees of the 3-day theory course.
Press Release, Sheffield, UK, 7 May 2009
The specialist engineering company, Pratt & Miller, has adopted fe-safe™ to deliver lightweight parts and predict fatigue life on all mission critical components in the company’s world class race cars.
With weight a primary consideration in motorsport, fe-safe™ is now used on all Pratt & Miller’s race car suspension and frame components to optimize design by reducing unnecessary material and therefore weight, while maintaining target fatigue life.
fe-safe™ determines how much the stresses must be changed in order to achieve the target design life – in this case the end of a race - clearly showing where the component is under or over-strength and most importantly for motorsport, where materials and weight can be reduced without compromising on safety.
The company switched to fe-safe™ from its previous fatigue analysis software suite primarily due to the specialist knowledge of support staff and the wide range of analysis types that are available within fe-safe™, coupled with a broad set of material properties and capabilities.
“Since our parts are optimized to the lightest possible configuration, all our primary load structures are now routinely analyzed using fe-safe™. It is critical that the design is optimized to be as light as possible while ensuring the component does not fail during a race. This is why fe-safe™ is so useful; it offers increased confidence that our designs are right first time and allows us to deliver lightweight parts to a lower target fatigue life factor than our competition.” Gary Latham , Design Office Manager, Pratt & Miller.
About Pratt & Miller
Pratt & Miller Engineering is a respected industry leader designing and building vehicles and subsystems in the automotive, commercial, military and aerospace industries. Today Pratt & Miller is recognized around the world as a formidable force in both motorsports and high-level engineering.
Press Release, Sheffield, UK, 9 March 2009
John Draper is presenting a three-day class on Modern Metal Fatigue Analysis at MIRA, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, April 1-3.
There have been major advances in methods of fatigue life estimation over the past 30 years. Allowable stresses can now be estimated to an accuracy of a few percent. Much of this knowledge is available in research papers but is not readily available to designers. This class is intended to help bridge the gap between research and design by providing a concise introduction to modern methods of fatigue analysis and their practical application through worked examples and interaction/discussion. Throughout, the emphasis is on practical application and there is a strong emphasis on what is possible and the pitfalls to avoid.
The class is aimed at Design and Test Engineers responsible for product durability in the ground vehicle, aerospace and manufacturing industries. It will also be of value to academics and undergraduates on mechanical engineering courses. No previous knowledge of fatigue is necessary.
Attendees will be introduced to the concepts of strain-based fatigue analysis and the more traditional S-N curve methods. Modern theories of multiaxial fatigue are described, together with their application to strain gauge measurements and fatigue analysis of finite element models. Also covered is statistical analysis, crack propagation and the fatigue of welded steel joints – as well as the merits and disadvantages of different types of fatigue tests and aspects of practical fatigue analysis.
John Draper’s recently published reference book, Modern Metal Fatigue Analysis, forms the basis for the course-notes for the class and can also be purchased from the EMAS website.
For further information and booking see the training page.
For more courses and seminars see the events page.