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Honeywell Aerospace uses HEEDS throughout the complete aircraft engine design process, from preliminary full engine performance design exploration to detailed component design, as well as calibration of models to test data.

The full engine performance studies rely on zero-dimensional or one-dimensional engine performance simulation models. There are typically many variables and constraints on single or multiple objectives. The simulations generally run very fast so the design exploration can accommodate a large number of evaluations. The detailed component analyses combine one-dimensional simulation models, for constructing turbine or fan blade geometry, with three-dimensional simulation models, for detailed flow, stress and vibration assessment. For all of these Honeywell studies, HEEDS is used to automatically assemble virtual prototypes from in-house and commercial simulation software, test these prototypes to predict performance, and explore the available design space to discover great designs. Honeywell will present their use cases, successes and challenges at Optimize This! 2016 Conference on October 12th.

In an automotive transmission, rotational mass reduction is critical for the improvement of fuel economy. However, difficulties in automated finite element modeling, non-linear analysis of gear contacts and bearing supports, and limitations of common single objective design studies create obstacles to identifying required design improvements. Toyota will present how they successfully used HEEDS to improve the design of a differential pinion shaft sub-system at the Optimize This! 2016 Conference on October 12th. The speaker will highlight how the multiple objectives of mass reduction and gear root stress minimization were achieved while satisfying numerous constraints involving fatigue and bearing life. 

Automotive front and rear bumper systems are key contributors to the crashworthiness of any vehicle. They serve not only to absorb energy, but also to minimize intrusion of foreign objects into the engine and passenger compartments. For this reason, their design is highly regulated by governmental safety organizations. Vehicle manufacturers have the competing challenge of satisfying these strict crash requirements while also reducing bumper assembly weight to meet stringent fuel economy mandates.   At the upcoming Optimize This! 2016 Conference, Magna Cosma engineers will highlight how they used HEEDS to automate the process of analyzing bumper variations to discover the best designs for both weight and crashworthiness.

In the oil and gas industry, metallic seals are often used to prevent the movement of fluid in the annular regions between concentric bodies. These seals may have a cross section in a "U" or "H" shape with bumps on the "legs" that provide the sealing surface. These seals must be designed with a sufficiently low installation load while at the same time must maintain adequate contact force on both sides of the seal during operation. Machine tolerance variations create the possibility of both a most-rigid and least-rigid version of a given nominal seal design, and the sealing criteria must be maintained for both scenarios. Tight machining tolerances allow for a less complicated design process with fewer iterations but are very expensive. HEEDS is used to optimize the geometry of a U-shaped seal to allow for looser tolerances and to minimize the annular width while maintaining installation and sealing design criteria. FMC Technologies will present this work at the Optimize This! 2016 Conference in October.

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