Lighter structural components with all performance and safety guarantees
The growing requirements for reducing the weight of vehicles and means of transport force us to rethink the way in which components are conceived from their design to their manufacture, seeking the optimal balance between weight, performance and safety.
The SLIMDOWN methodology developed by AZTERLAN allows the weight of vehicles to be reduced through the development and application of new materials and manufacturing methods, allowing the optimized redesign of structural steel elements.
A complete analysis of the component, its nesting in the structure (interactions and interdependencies with other elements) and the supported workloads offers key information related to common or expected causes of failure, as well as strengths and weaknesses of the design and the materials used.
After selecting a new material that offers greater performance and ensures the required properties, and depending on the observations of the preliminary study, a lightened redesign is reconsidered (based on modeling and simulations) that will be manufactured and subjected to static and dynamic tests.
Application of the continuous improvement cycle “redesign-manufacturing-testing” on the design and manufacturing process until obtaining the same or better performance than the original non-lightened part, ensuring the avoidance of embrittlement, buckling or deformation problems that cause ductile failure.
“Solid state forming technologies gather a diverse group manufacturing means, materials and sectors with very different characteristics. However, they face common challenges associated with the incorporation of new materials, demanding production rates and increasing requests for the products they manufacture.
Developing components with advanced features, improving the useful life of manufacturing tools and addressing new markets and industrial applications are some of the areas through which we add value to the companies that design, manufacture and apply these components.”
