The road is a safer place than it used to be. Traffic deaths in the United States have been reduced by more than two-thirds over the past 40 years.

According to the federal government, there were 5.5 deaths per million vehicle miles traveled in 1966. That toll is down to about 1.5 deaths and holding in recent years. The survival rate is partly attributable to the universal use of seatbelts and to a crackdown on drunk drivers. It is also the result of much safer automobiles.

BMW's validation: Photos at left show the experimental results of a double-chamber column made of extruded aluminum and, for comparison, the results predicted by Abaqus.

Besides the humanitarian and ethical incentives to produce safe vehicles for the public, automakers receive marching orders from the government, as new regulations take effect. Meeting rules is part of the cost of doing business, but it can get expensive indeed if all you can do is build prototype cars and run them into walls.

That's why there is crash simulation software. "It allows automakers to design for crashes before they build a prototype," said Marc Shrank, director of product management for Abaqus Inc. "They only get one chance to crash that prototype."

Extensive simulation lets engineers test plenty of ideas—different materials and structures—for crashworthiness. Then designers can focus on the most promising. That is, if they can trust the predictions of the software.

Design ideas go through impact tests before a prototype is ever made.

So they need to validate their computer models with lab tests from time to time. Abaqus has sent us results of some tests done by BMW comparing the conclusions of simulations with results of physical experiments.

It is a set of images that considers failure tests of two double-chamber aluminum columns. One was subjected to quasi-static compression and the other to dynamic compression. In the first scenario, the upper part of the structure buckled in a fairly uniform pattern; in the second, material was torn and peeled away. Photos of the columns after the physical tests correlated so closely with the computer images generated by the simulations that Abaqus wanted to publish them.

Tenths of a second can make the difference between a gold medal and fourth place in Olympic cycling. The rider with the better helmet has an edge. That's why the British cycling team has commissioned computational fluid dynamics of its gear for the 2008 games in Beijing. The team did the same thing before the Summer Games in Athens in 2004, when it took two golds.

In June 2004, just weeks before the Olympics, the cycling governing body made a rule change. Now, only helmets passing a formal safety test in an accredited laboratory can be used in Olympic track competition. The British cycling team had four helmet designs that fitted the specifications, each with a different aerodynamic styling. Which one to use?

The team commissioned computational fluid dynamics studies from the Sports Engineering Research Group to study helmet aerodynamics. The research group, which goes by the acronym SERG, is housed at the University of Sheffield in England.

John Hart of SERG decided to capture the geometry of both athlete and helmet with a 3-D scanner fitted with a FaroArm. The scanner is from ModelKinetix of Oxford, England, while the arm is from Faro Technologies Inc. of Lake Mary, Fla.

Hart and fellow engineers planned to scan bikers in different racing positions. But time was running out. To save time, he scanned a colleague to capture basic human geometry. He broke the scans into sections to help eliminate any issues arising from movement during the scanning process.

Then, Hart imported the point-cloud data collected from the scans of the four different helmets into reverse-engineering software that generated models for CFD analysis. That reverse-engineering technology is from Geomagic Studio of Research Triangle Park, N.C.

The models were imported into CFD software from Fluent of Le- banon, N.H., and the CFD results were imported into flow visualization software from Computational Engineering International of Apex, N.C.

After all that importing, the SERG researchers had the information they wanted and could identify how the helmet and cyclist best interacted while racing. They recommended their chosen helmet design.

SERG is working with the team again for 2008.

Digital shape sampling, the creation of computer renderings of physical objects, is like 3-D computer-assisted design and manufacturing in reverse.

One process starts with a concept in the mind of an engineer, who renders it as an image and a series of instructions in a computer for eventual manufacture into a solid object. The other process, shape sampling, starts with a product—or any object, from a bicycle helmet to a human knee—that is explored by a laser or white light scanner which defines outward geometry and records the data in a computer.

Sampling a shape and processing the data can speed custom dentistry and replacement surgery, create CAD files from complex shapes, and verify the accuracy of manufactured parts. Andrew Stein is vice president of marketing, product management, and business development at Raindrop Geomagic, a software developer in the field of shape sampling.

Stein said the technology has been widely adopted in recent years. Aerospace and automobile manufacturers, for instance, use it to sample the shapes of airplane wings or the fenders and doors of cars to make sure that they fall within acceptable tolerances.

In order to promote wider use of digital shape sampling, and to keep its software abreast of developments in scanner hardware, the company has formed the Geomagic Alliance Program. Scanning hardware manufacturers, including Faro Technologies Inc., Laser Design Inc., and Konica-Minolta, are working with Geomagic in the program.

The alliance will let Geomagic work with hardware makers under nondisclosure agreements so that the company's software will be ready when new hardware features are introduced. They also plan to cooperate on marketing programs for increasing sales.

"The alliance will help Geomagic and its measurement systems partners build better solutions and market them more effectively for mutual benefit," Stein said.

Geomagic's latest version of its computer-aided inspection software, Qualify 8, meanwhile, lists among its features increased plug-in support for optical measurement systems and arm-mounted scan heads, and also a "unique integration" with the Faro Laser Tracker.

According to Stein, "Our integration of Faro tracker support in Qualify 8 complements Faro's software by integrating the measured data with other workflows and data sets. Typically, these are different users solving different problems."

An online service that puts engineers in touch with suppliers has added features so that buyers may share account information selectively on collaborative projects.

MfgQuote.com, the service, said that buyers can work together securely online to distribute requests for quotes, collaborate internally with each other and externally with suppliers, and manage data. The new service is hosted by MfgQuote.com, and needs no additional software or hardware. It is free to buyers using the service.

According to Mitch Free, president and CEO of MfgQuote.com, information had previously resided in individual buyer accounts, but there was no provision for sharing it easily. Information includes the histories of transactions going back to the initial RFQs.

The collaborative nature of the service makes it possible to forward those histories to others, including purchasing offices, which may need to consult them. The records explain the reasoning and steps that led to buying choices.

Free said the idea of adding a collaborative element to the online service grew out of a request by some buyers at NASA, whose mission leads it into many cooperative projects. As Free explained it, engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston told him, "It would be really nice if you let us work together as a group."

About 1,800 suppliers use the service and pay a fee of $2,000 to $12,000, depending on the segments they participate in. Buyers can invite non-subscribing suppliers to bid through the service on specific projects.

According to Free, the service has about 45,000 buyers and, based on dollar volume, has seen its strongest areas of transaction in mechanical processes, including assembly, machining, molding, and fabrication.

Agile Software Corp. has released Agile 9.2 product lifecycle management software. The company said the product has expanded compliance, product portfolio, product collaboration, and quality management modules, and will now operate on Linux.

Flexity LLC of Santa Cruz, Calif., has introduced the PowerSquid surge protector. The company says it's the next step in the power strip's evolution. Its design uses flexible arms for the female outlets to fit transformer plugs without wasting outlets.

Visiprise Inc. of Atlanta has unveiled Visiprise Manufacturing 4.1. This integrated manufacturing platform provides increased performance and scalability while improving system security, the company says.

D-Cubed Ltd. of Cambridge, England, has released version 34.0 of four software components—3D Dimensional Constraint Manager, Assembly Engineering Manager, Collision Detection Manager, and Hidden Line Manager.

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© 2006 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers