Simulation goes off road

The off-highway industry is using computer modeling to reduce cost and save time in a variety of ways.

Manufacturers of off-highway vehicles are taking the tools developed for aerospace and automotive applications and applying them to improve the performance of their equipment while simultaneously reducing development time. They are also actively developing new tools and processes to deal with some unique problems. While vehicle structure design has been the focus of what has become traditional finite-element analysis (FEA), there are other interesting uses of both new and existing tools.

At Dana Corp.'s Off-Highway Systems division, engineers are finding new uses for the Ansys Workbench from Ansys, Inc. Part of the Heavy Vehicle Technologies and Systems Group, Off-Highway Systems is a Dana business unit that designs, manufactures, assembles, and markets axles and transaxles; driveshafts and end-fittings; transmissions; torque converters; electronic controls; and brakes.