What makes consumers loyal to a product? There are many factors ranging from sensory perception to quality and durability, and now more than ever, the sustainability of the product and its impact on the planet. Consumers use the same factors to judge all products no matter if it’s a dishwasher, athletic shoes, or mobile phones. Altair’s broad portfolio of solvers helps in every step of design.
Consumer products of all kinds must be designed to withstand the structural and operational requirements associated with normal use, drop, and misuse, all while balancing weight and cost considerations. Altair solutions enable simulation of structural, thermal, and fluid properties, vibration, electromagnetics, and manufacturing constraints in an integrated multiphysics environment.
Simulation is required to design and integrate sensors and antennas for a wide range of connected wearable devices. Tools for antenna design and placement ensure signal reliability and compatibility, while Internet of Things (IoT) software is deployed to collect data gathered by the device’s sensors and transfer it to manufacturers for remote maintenance and product life improvement insights.
Manufacturers dedicate large amounts of time and expense to physical prototyping to validate product performance. Simulation can dramatically speed up time-to-market by enabling the testing of multiple design concepts and variables virtually. Multiple variants can be efficiently tested at a massive scale without physical testing and repeated redesign iterations. Replacing even one prototyping cycle with simulation could mean getting products to the market months faster than the competition.
Consumer products are all about the user experience. Whether it is the initial impression of the packaging and shelf appeal, to the user interaction and interface, Altair can help. Altair® Inspire™ Studio allows industrial designers to develop products faster, facilitating initial sketching and exploration of styling alternatives, as well as development of photo-realistic renderings. With organic surface modeling and parametric control, and a unique construction tree history feature, designers can focus on their ideas instead of struggling with the design technology.
Altair’s industrial design services can help customers with everything from user research, to branding, to design and prototyping.
The consumer goods industry is fast paced and highly competitive, with designs becoming increasingly complex while the timeline for production shrinks. Companies must innovate and develop new products quickly to retain and attract new customers. To keep up with the pace of today’s innovation, manufacturers needs to get faster insights on their most complex simulation and optimization jobs. Altair’s high-performance computing and cloud tools enable users to easily set up, submit, and monitor large simulation and optimization jobs on local or cloud compute resources.
Sporting goods manufacturers are often at the forefront of the use of advanced materials to drive peak performance. Designers of tennis rackets, hockey sticks, racing bicycles, and more take advantage of simulation, automation, and optimization to reduce design cycle time and enhance product value. Altair helps them to model the behavior of advanced composite materials and accurately map simulation data to test results to validate designs.
With more than 30 years of crash and safety biomechanics experience, Altair also supports manufacturers of sporting goods with modeling complex human-product interaction. Leveraging detailed anthropomorphic structures and powerful nonlinear structural analysis technology, we help companies merge biology with technology and bring innovative products like concussion-prevention football helmets to the consumers that need them.
Many economical gains can be made also by improving the processing and packaging needed for consumer products. Altair has the experience and expertise to simulate and tune manufacturing processes for optimal performance and cost as well as optimize product packaging for protection against shipping and abuse conditions.
Altair’s solutions for process manufacturing enable detailed analysis and visualization of the flow of particles, like powders and tablets, through process segments and handling equipment. These simulation insights can reduce manufacturing risk and shorten product development cycles.