| |
Eric Jaarda, GE Plastics, Southfield, MI
An example of an automotive head lamp reflector
Material selection decisions are becoming increasingly critical in automotive
lighting. The drive for product differentiation and unique styling has
pushed the performance envelope of traditional materials. At the same
time, the demands of the marketplace continue to reign in costs and design
development time.
GE Plastics, an engineering resin supplier, has used FLUENT software
to deliver more precise material selection guidelines to their automotive
customers by predicting the operating temperature of a given headlamp
reflector design. According to David Bryce, GEP’s Technical Manager,
Lighting, “By selecting the most appropriate material for each component,
our customers can design for tooling and manufacturing needs that are
specific to that material. Additionally, the lowest cost material meeting
the thermal load requirements can be chosen, averting costs due to over-engineering
of the design.” Design-specific heat transfer and fluid flow analysis
captures the uniqueness of each lamp system.
Development timelines are continually being shortened however, and the
time required to model and analyze a complex system can sometimes extend
the entire program timeline. “We are finding that many of our customers
can only allow very little time in their design cycle for feasibility
analysis,” says Jim Wilson, GEP’s Commercial Technology Manager,
High Performance Polymers. A completed design must be immediately sent
out for tooling prior to verification that the correct material selection
was made. Iterative design changes are viewed as inefficiency in the process.
A material choice is needed to optimize the design, yet the appropriate
material cannot be selected until the design is ready for analysis and
its thermal requirements determined. This conundrum has encouraged GEP
to implement FLUENT in the design process in a new way.
GEP wanted to put the ability to design in its customers’ hands,
rather than dictate changes to suit material requirements after the design
was finalized. To accomplish this, they developed a headlamp design calculator
to assist their customers in making up-front material selections. Using
FLUENT, GEP was able to examine a broad array of common lamp designs and
focus on the design features that were most critical to material selection.
The result was a design calculator, soon to be available to GEP’s
customers on their web site www.geplastics.com.
The calculator allows the customer to examine their allowable system space
before they ever produce any design data. Instant temperature and material
suggestions enable them to adjust or trade-off various elements of their
design to achieve a more cost-effective material specification. This is
all prior to establishing a final geometry that can then be optimized
for that material.
The automotive lighting design calculator
A verification of correct material selection is, of course, needed when
the design is finalized. At that point a design-specific CFD analysis
can be performed, but the initial material suggestion from the calculator
helps reduce post-design modifications and speed development.
|
|
|
