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.
“Las tecnologías de conformado agrupan vías de fabricación, materiales y sectores con características muy diversas. Sin embargo, se enfrentan a retos comunes asociados a la incorporación de nuevos materiales, exigentes cadencias de producción y crecientes solicitudes de los productos fabricados.
Desarrollar componentes conformados con prestaciones avanzadas, mejorar la vida útil de los útiles de trabajo y abordar nuevos mercados y aplicaciones industriales son algunos de ámbitos a través de los que aportamos valor a las empresas que diseñan, fabrican y aplican estos componentes.”
