Altair plans to focus on NVH, lightweighting and powertrain simulation:

The US-based Altair is focused on the development and application of simulation technology to synthesise and optimise designs, processes and decisions for improved business performance. Founded in 1985 in Troy, Michigan, USA, it has more than 2,600 employ

Q: What are the key areas in which simulation help automotive OEMs and suppliers?

Pavan: Any regulatory requirement enforced by the government mandates simulations. Safety regulations are one such requirement. The upcoming BS-VI make OEMs to redesign systems to meet the new emission norms. This calls for advanced CFD simulations. Change in consumer buying patterns like increase in connectivity and demand for reduced noise emissions calls for simulations in electromagnetic and NVH analysis. With easy user experience, simulation technologies are now becoming more prevalent in departments which need them but do not necessarily allocate experts to use them.

Q: With BS VI emission norms kicking in from 2020 in India, it is estimated that average vehicle weight will rise due to additional components. How Altair view this and do you think you can address it?

Pavan: Altair is perfectly placed in a sweet spot to handle light-weighting challenges. Technologies in design, 3D printing, and composites will come into play. They have been well established in the aerospace industry. Altair has these technologies and can complement them with consulting expertise to achieve the same for the auto OEMs.

Q: We see a rise in demand for hybrid and electric vehicles globally. Are you ready to meet these new technological challenges?

Pavan: Hybrid and electric vehicles do bring challenges from 2 fronts. One from structural aspects of the vehicles and the other one from the power source. From a structural standpoint the physics remains the same. Technologies here are well established with the OEMs, but the suppliers may need help with software and consulting. In the last 3-4 years Altair has done many

projects to address the power unit side of things. Crash studies for battery, electro-magnetic interference and electro-magnetic compliance are some of the areas we address.

Q: Can we say that the Altair’s focus will be on hybrid and electric vehicles, especially in India?

Pavan: E-mobility is the next wave which is waiting to happen much earlier than one will expect. But we will also focus on connected vehicles, followed by driver- assisted technologies which will come into play before it is perfected for autonomous vehicles.

Q: Going forward, what will be the company’s strategy and roadmap for India?

Pavan: Altair plans for aggressive growth on the following fronts – e-mobility, IoT, engineering of connected devices in addition to consolidation on regular structural and CFD fronts in the areas of Powertrain simulation and NVH.

Q: How Altair help to reduce the time taken for a crash test analysis?

Pavan: Altair has been at the forefront of harvesting compute infrastructure. Altair offers middle wear technology PBS Works to manage and optimise usage of compute resources. With this expertise at home, we have programmed software to scale and make them run on cloud infrastructure. The availability of private and public cloud has removed the investment overload for customers who can now get access to larger compute resources on a limited, time-based manner.

‘Radioss’ which is our crash and safety solution brings in consistent and accurate results whether you run the crash problem on 2 or 4 or 8 …..or a 128 core hardware cluster. This todate remains unparalleled in the industry.

Q: Do you think the Indian automotive industry, especially the component suppliers, can upgrade their capabilities to meet the growing needs?

Pavan: The automotive products have become very sophisticated over the years with the increased use of different technologies to meet the ever-growing demands of the consumers. OEMs doing it all is becoming a losing proposition. This is very evident with e-mobility. No OEM wants to get into battery technology themselves all alone as Tier-1 with legacy expertise are a better option to bet on given their long experience. Also electronics is another area where Tier 1 and Tier 2 will have chunk of these technologies to provide. The more complex the product the more dependence on newer suppliers and this calls for more robust testing methods. That means more expense. Simulation is the only alternative to address these challenges not just from an expense perspective but a robust tool to design and engineer virtually, thereby leading to higher quality products.

Q: As the OEMs have started downsising the engines, what will be their challenges and what will happen to the shrinking life cycle of the products?

Pavan: Engine downsising has to happen without the loss of performance. According to statistics the fundamental internal combustion is probably the least efficient among all and the efficiency rating is probably between 20-30%. The single heavy loss is heat loss. So, the need for a better cooling system coupled with lightweight materials and friction-free surfaces. For instance, the most well-rated engine in India is the Ford Ecosport 1 litre engine, which has new techniques like material, capacity and efficiency in cooling system, so it is definitely possible to get the desired output.

Q: Apart from simulation, is Altair involved in making suggestions on the power, lightweighting and safety requirements?

Pavan: Altair started as a consultancy where we learnt about the requirements of OEMs and their engineers. We have not switched off our consultancy business. Our logic is not to lose our knowledge which we have gained in consultancy and

but use it to make a product better. We have close to 500 individuals who have many years of experience to figure out the problems. There are certain domains where we are leaders for suggesting methods, possibilities and in providing the tools. Our priority is lightweighting and there is no doubt in it. We have also created expertise around noise vibration more as a process function. NVH (Noise Vibration Harshness) is an important consultancy tool.

Q: How Altair is trying to reduce NVH in high-powered two-wheelers and how does it help the customers to reduce NVH without compromising on performance?

Pavan: Lightweighting also helps engine parts. The reduction in engine parts will automatically cut out many of the problems. The second thing is to find out the modes which are contributing to noise and they can be reworked with geometry to remove that mode. So that all the resonancerelated issues will be avoided. The other side is making a stiff chassis according to the road condition. One such tool that helps in reducing noise is NVH which allows you to figure out how noise travels through the structure and what contributes mainly to the noise occurrence. So maybe a simple mechanism put a bandaid to that by putting a bush in the middle of 2 meeting points where it receives signal. Simulation today is being used as a validation tool. It has to become a method to explore the alternatives and that capability is available today. The key issue then was licences and we were willing to give hundreds of licenses. To avoid this issue, we have done a unique technique called Hyper Works Unlimited, which means to create machines in collaboration with OEMs and licensing will be completely open for that particular machine.

Q: Are you planning to look at new areas in simulation where you can add value to your customers?

Pavan: Definitely. This work is always in progress. Today all the auto OEMs have to be focused on BS-VI and electrification of vehicles. Fortunately, we have Finite Element Analysis (FEA) which has answers for those problems. Whether it is an electromagnetic problem or structural problem, FEA can be applied, so we have made investments in OEMs, design, motors, sensors etc., There is a software called Flux where you can do designing. The next step would be integration. One big issue today is the cable harness in cars. People want to use wireless communication system. The third aspect of a vehicle is predictive maintenance i.e. scheduled time frame of service so we can have a system where we have real time data collection with sensors which monitor the vehicle parameter and send it to the cloud. From cloud the data can be analysed.

Q: Are you working on solutions for low-cost vehicles?

Pavan: It is a perpetually evolving game. We have partnered with a few material suppliers. For instance, companies involved in plastic manufacturing where they have application engineering group which tries to replace metals with plastics. We are helping them in regulatory requirements, simulating and understanding them or formulation of new composite materials by changing the layer structure etc., Low cost cars have the most engineering because the number of compromises are much higher than the one at the other end of the spectrum. It is much more difficult to engineer as it does not have any fancy materials. Getting the most with the least amount of money is a challenging one for the low-cost cars.

Q: What are the expected changes in light-weighting technology in accordance with the safety norms?

Pavan: It will evolve to be a far more engineered function. The space zone which needs lots of simulation technologies should be provided and the dashboard should be changed to escape from the crash tests. And this application is not new in the industry.