Using Superelement Approach to Improve Automotive FEA

Abstract

As product development time in the automotive industry becomes shorter, the customers require more rapid and accurate FEA results. Simultaneously, FE models are frequently getting larger and more complex, in order to represent the engineering problem closely. It is becoming more and more challenging to meet these requirements. One of the possible solutions, to avoid a significant increase of computing resources and calculation time without losing accuracy in the results of the analyzed fields, is substructuring. Authors try to show that implementation of superelements in FE models is neither more complicated nor too time consuming in comparison to achievable benefits. To demonstrate the validity of superelement usage some practical examples, from the automotive industry, are gathered in this paper. In the presented cases, substructures improved FE results and in some, helped to meet project timing deadlines. Particular case studies are presented in the area of linear dynamics. Substructure replaced parts that are not in the area of FEA engineer interest and are not covered in the data post-processing. However, these components should not be skipped for reflecting real physical behavior of the analysed system. Applying superelements in linear dynamic analysis allowed to obtain better results without significantly increasing computing resources. A part of the paper is dedicated to handling substructures for optimization purposes. Optimization step is an iterative process, and in a lot of cases to gain acceptable results, hundreds or thousands of increments have to be calculated. Calculating a high complexity model with numerous variables can result in an unsolvable task. Fortunately, with implementing superelements, it is possible to focus only on components to be optimized while taking into account global model behavior. The last part of the presentation will present an example of new opportunities to use superelements in our applications.