Cosmos New Product Finite Element Analysis Review

Cosmos

Situation

A potential new client wanted to change the costly aluminum structural members in its current product line to an all-new plastic design solution.

Challenge

To change the existing product from aluminum to plastic, a detailed understanding of the product’s use in the field was required to identify product constraints:

  1. Dimensions and detailed load specifications needed to be collected.
  2. The collected data needed to be scrutinized to determine if it was even possible to design a plastic extrusion profile that would meet all the required specifications.
  3. While viewing multiple design concepts, it became clear that each of these design approaches required a more in-depth understanding of real life applications.

Solution

Formtech’s engineers were able to develop the following solutions:

  1. Using solid modeling design software, Formtech was able to understand each component of the part.
  2. The complete structure was submitted for an in-depth Finite Element Analysis (FEA).
  3. The newly designed plastic extrusion components were substituted for the current aluminum parts, allowing for a variety of design modifications. The final result was an extruded profile that truly represented the actual stress exposure.

Results

Formtech succeeded at transforming the part from aluminum to plastic:

  1. The resulting FEA data clearly identified the feasibility to manufacture an extruded plastic part that could be substituted for the aluminum part without the manufacturing of any prototype tooling and field-testing.