Bionic structures to advance at Airbus APWorks with Altair assistance

Altair and APWorks have entered a partnership for advancing the geometrical freedom, lightweight, functionally integrated and customised designs of additive manufacturing.

Additionally, Altair will also provide the Airbus-owned subsidiary with consulting, advanced design and simulation technology as well as production processes.

Altair expects to explore the potential of additive manufacturing through pilot projects and technology demonstrators to help identify applications, redesign components, quantification of potential levels of product performance improvements, printing and physical testing of prototypes up to serial production, and cost analysis and business case preparation.

In a second phase, the offering will also include knowledge transfer to the customer and the adoption of additive manufacturing within their organisation.

Another area of collaboration will be the advancement of Altair’s Software through APWorks’ expertise aiming for an end-to-end simulation driven design process for printed metal parts.

“I am very happy about this agreement,” said Altair managing director Dr. Pietro Cervellera. “At Altair we have always believed that the place for simulation and optimization is right at the concept phase of the development process.

“A simulation driven design process can help designers and engineers generate better design ideas faster and inject innovation into products.”

APWorks has embraced this philosophy, demonstrated by its Light Rider bionic frame motorbike concept, inspired by nature, generated with OptiStruct’s topology optimisation technology and then printed.

“Combining design expertise with production knowledge will greatly expand the possibilities for our customers. We are looking forward to various applications and business cases in the future,” said APWorks managing director Joachim Zettler.