Fueltech Selects CATIA PLM Express from Dassault Systèmes
Reduce Product Development Time from Days to Hours and Boost Productivity

Dassault Systèmes recently announced that Fueltech Sweden AB, a member of the SAG Group, has chosen CATIA PLM Express to boost productivity. Fueltech designs and manufactures fuel, oil and urea tanks for companies such as Volvo and Scania, and chose CATIA PLM Express because of its ease of use and its design speed, in addition to CATIA being the automotive industry standard.

“There are often several rounds of discussions with customers with respect to a design before reaching an agreement. This is why shortening the product design preparation time becomes crucial,” stated Matthias Nedfors, R&D product manager, Fueltech Sweden AB. “Now by just simply clicking on the buttons or dragging arrows in the drawings, this tedious process is reduced from several days to only one or a few hours. This dramatically shortens construction lead time with not only a more effective product design process but also a much higher level of customer satisfaction.”

“For companies like Fueltech, CATIA PLM Express optimizes product development at every level and is fully compliant with their OEM customers, suppliers, and partners, eliminating the need for additional software integration,” explains Didier Gaillard, managing director, Dassault Systèmes AB. “CATIA PLM Express is powerful, easy to install, and use. It delivers the secure collaborative environment necessary for Fueltech to work closely with various customers and partners in order to produce the right product. And thanks to its built-in scalability, CATIA PLM Express makes it very simple for Fueltech to grow their implementation as their needs evolve.”

Semcon Engineering Solutions provided Fueltech with the CATIA PLM Express license so that they could introduce their latest designs to customers quickly. Fueltech’s investment in CATIA PLM Express will position them as a major international tank supplier by enabling them to work more interactively with their major customers.

CATIA PLM Express is a scalable solution, tailored to meet the needs of companies of all sizes. It provides CATIA design excellence and a fast track to PLM at an affordable price. It enables designers to work fast, collaborate easily and securely, reduce costs, expand innovation, increase quality, and get products to market on time, therefore increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

CATIA Makes Possible a Solution to Global Warming
Thomas E. Kasmer, Hydristor Corp

I have used CATIA V3 and V4 since 1997 in my quest to create a hybrid technology for cars and trucks. Originally, I was trying to create a totally solar powered car called the Mag One. The concept was feasible but the million dollars required was not there. So, I modified my approach initially to drive a John Deere lawn tractor and that can be seen on Web site http://www.hydristor.com. This proved the function of the Hydristor technology which is a totally variable hydraulic vane pump/motor. Packaging two of these in the form factor of an automotive OEM torque converter as a standard unit with some adapters to enable the same Hydristor converter to fit a multiplicity of vehicles was the next logical step.

Having done the design, I am now working on the financing of several prototypes for a Ford Expedition and a DeLorean DMC-12. The idea is to retrofit these vehicles with Hydristors and pressure storage accumulators which allow the engine to develop the average road horsepower required to drive the car instead of the peak horsepower. The engine can be operated at the lowest possible speed, usually idle, so as to charge the pressure tanks, or the engine can be turned completely off. The vehicle kinetic energy can be recycled upon stopping and re-used to drive the vehicle. There are two direct results which have a significant impact on global warming and also energy. Since the engine is usually idling or is completely turned off, the generation of CO2 greenhouse gas is quartered on average by my estimate and the fuel economy is typically doubled on the highway with city driving mileage near the augmented highway mileage. The Ford Expedition which weighs 7,000 pounds will see an increase from 16-to-45 with highway driving and from 12-to-40 for city. The retrofitted vehicle becomes a true full-hydraulic hybrid.

As an aside, if every vehicle already on the highway were retrofitted (in a 5-6 year period), then the national-USA use of oil would drop to half and the ‘existing’ generation of CO2 would be quartered. This same approach applied worldwide could result in a rollback of the present CO2 production without scrapping all the existing vehicles in anticipation of hybrids, electric or otherwise. This item alone represents a significant benefit for the environment. What energy and raw materials will be required to scrap all the existing cars and trucks in favor of questionable hybrids? The Hydristor retrofit method would preclude this and would save the natural resources and related energy expenditure required for scrapping all vehicles.

Any vehicle equipped with a Hydristor recycling converter and energy storage would become an awesome performer with AWD vehicles accelerating 0-60 in 3 seconds even if the vehicle was diesel powered. Large SUVs and pickups would become desirable again by producing economy in the range of the hybrids and performance soundly outstripping the hybrids. If this technology were adopted by the US automobile companies, the downward spiral in business would turn sharply up as customers could again buy what they really wanted and the existing environmental penalty associated with those types of vehicles would be eliminated. The domestic auto companies would resume expansion and re-hiring which would greatly benefit the country.

Another paradigm shift associated with the Hydristor is in the field of electrical power generation. A four-chamber Hydristor can act as a variable Freon pump by the use of one of the 4 chambers to compress Freon gas to extract absorbed heat and the hot, pressurized gas can be directed to a Stirling heat engine which converts the applied heat to shaft horsepower at a conversion-efficiency of 40 percent at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. The Stirling removes some of the heat energy while retaining the original compressed pressure. This energy-reduced but still compressed Freon gas is returned to the compression Hydristor where it is re-introduced into the second Hydristor chamber. The second chamber is varied to expand with rotation and most of the mechanical compression energy is returned to the common Hydristor rotor where it serves to reduce the required input drive to the Compression Hydristor. For good efficiency, the expanding Freon is retained inside the Hydristor so that additional rotation of the rotor and vanes further expands in chambers three and then four and extracts a maximum amount of the original mechanical compression energy finally minimizing the required drive energy supplied by the external drive motor. Conventional Freon heat pumps have been commercially available since 1950 and they reach a gain (C.O.P.) of 300 percent.

In simple language, if your heat is electric baseboard and you registered a December bill in the Northeast of $900, you could reduce that bill to $300 if you had instead used a conventional Freon heat pump to heat your house. That is the bottom line of a 300 percent (C.O.P=3) gain of conventional technology. A Hydristor Freon super heat-pump would have a  C.O.P. =10 and the same bill would be further reduced to $90 for that cold December month. That would represent a savings of 90 percent in energy cost.

Consider directing the heat capture output of a conventional Freon heat-pump to the 40 percent efficient Stirling engine. Say one kilowatt of electricity was supplied to the conventional Heat pump drive motor. The harvest of environmental heat from the outdoor air or water would yield 3 kilowatts of equivalent electrical energy in the form of compressed, heated Freon gas to the Stirling. The Stirling would turn that three kw of heat energy into 1.2 kw of shaft horsepower using today’s technology. The next step would be to connect an electrical generator to the Stirling output and typical efficiency of the generator would be 90 percent. The generator would now convert the 1.2 kw of shaft horsepower into 1.08 kw of original type of electricity which initially was provided by the power company wall-plug.

If you started the system and then quickly pulled the plug from the wall socket, then moved the plug to the generated output, the system might continue to run; perhaps as long as Niagara Falls will run, but there is virtually nothing left over even to power a light bulb. Now introduce the Hydristor super Freon heat pump with a C.O.P=10 in place of the conventional Freon system. An input of 1 kw harvests 10 kw equivalent heat energy to the Stirling which converts it into 4 kw of shaft horsepower and the driven generator makes 3.6 kw of electricity from a power company input of 1 kw.

For those who would interject concepts related to ‘perpetual motion’ at this point in my story, I say ‘consider how Niagara Falls makes electricity seemingly for free but actually driven by the Sun’s heat energy causing evaporation of the waters to rise up against gravity to rain on the hills and fill the Great Lakes’ and there you have nature’s example to the human race of how to make energy for man’s use. I propose to package ‘Niagara Falls in a Box’ and make truly free electricity with truly zero emissions.

I believe this is the future for the generations to come. Hydristor underwater heat exchangers can be sited several hundred yards offshore in a manner so as to make zero the impact on coral and sea life. Arrays of such heat exchangers could line 10,000 miles of ocean and large lake coastlines to form more localized power grids. The long distance power transmission power grids which are susceptible to large area blackouts could be retired. The existing air burning power plants could be retired with significant further reductions in CO2.

The overheated waters that are causing horrific weather in increasing frequency and in new regions previously not known for events like tornados could be cooled by the extraction of heat energy from the waters. Energy could become free for everyone as air and water are free. In terms of the Global Warming challenge, I envision many ‘cleanup’ stations placed around the Earth, operated by Hydristor, solar and wind energy combining forces to power the temperature reduction of atmosphere to cooler and cooler temperatures until the excess CO2 is distilled out, and other pollutants added by man’s Industrial Revolution are also removed, expelling pre-industrial atmosphere in the opposite direction from the initial air intake. These stations could be funded by donations from individuals and groups who have the Earth’s natural health in their hearts and minds.

I believe that I have reached this point of understanding with the help and assistance given to me by IBM Corporation and Dassault Systèmes in the form of excellent equipment and the power of CATIA V3 and V4. These tools have been as visual as X-ray glasses looking through the physically solid real world, enabling me to ‘see’ inside the box just as an oscilloscope allows me to observe the behavior of electrons operating at light speed inside electrical wires.

I have been a ‘lonely inventor’ as described in a recent news story and I have operated under very limited resources for the past 16 years. I expect to attain the recognition of working physical systems soon. The availability of the CATIA V5 would markedly speed up my work efforts by allowing exploration of alternatives and by affording better design analysis through the ‘virtual reality’ scheme.

I would welcome any help in this adventure from those who would join me in my ‘save the humans’ quest. 

To contact Thomas, dial 607-206-8960 or 'Hydristor' on Skype or tkasmer@yahoo.com.

V5 PLM Success Story: North American Eagle, Inc., Breaking the Land Speed Record with CATIA

Overview

Challenge
A North American team seeking to break the land speed record needed to design and test its vehicle to achieve speeds of more than 800 miles per hour (1290 kph).

Solution
Using CATIA V5, the team can design and test vehicle components, including wheels, brakes and control systems, to ensure project success and driver safety.

Benefits
CATIA V5’s simulation tools ensure the vehicle can withstand the stresses of trans-sonic speeds and enable the collection of data never before available to the aerospace community.

“With a partners like Dassault Systèmes and INCAT, there is nothing that is insurmountable now.” Ed Shadle, Co-Owner and Driver, North American Eagle

Speeding to Success
Like the test pilots of the 1950s who dreamed of breaking the sound barrier, a team of North American engineers and racing enthusiasts is attempting to break the land speed record of 763 miles per hour (1231 kph) set by a British team in 1997. The dream began almost 10 years ago with few resources, but a strong vision of a land speed vehicle based on an F104 Starfighter aircraft fuselage.

Ed Shadle and Keith Zanghi, co-owners of the vehicle and project, and a dedicated team of almost 40 volunteers work regular jobs during the week as everything from aerospace engineers and computer specialists to teachers and truck drivers and commit weekends to reaching speeds of more than 800 mph. With the history and karma of a refurbished and repurposed fuselage once fl own by test pilots Scott Crossfield and Chuck Yeager and the cutting-edge design and testing capabilities of CATIA V5 software from Dassault Systèmes, Shadle and Zanghi believe their goals are safely in reach.

CATIA V5 Makes Project Viable
“Over the past two years, we have reached the level where we’re finally technologically able to say that we’re a viable project and have as good a chance as anyone on earth of setting the land speed record,” Shadle says.

The team, however, still faces three major challenges before it will be ready to try to break the record. First, Shadle says, they must complete the high speed wheels that will be needed to move beyond the 300 mph (484 kph) test speeds the team has already achieved. Second, it must complete and test through simulation all of the aerodynamic design work on the vehicle and its control systems to ensure the vehicle can safely withstand the trans-sonic speeds it will be subjected to. And last, but certainly not least, the team needs additional sponsorship to help finance the project, which has largely been funded by the co-owners thus far.

Zanghi and fellow team member Steven Wallace are both experienced CATIA users thanks to their day jobs with Boeing. With the capabilities of the software and the assistance of the team at INCAT, they have been able to digitize data on the vehicle that will allow the team to complete structural analysis using computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis.

“CATIA is the only product out there that we can use to get over this next technology hill,” Zanghi says. “Design time now will be more efficient and we’ll be using real facts and data rather than speculation.

Wallace says that because of Dassault Systèmes involvement, the team now has the digital data it needs to go to the next step. “Without it, we wouldn’t be going anywhere,” he says. “This is a real milestone in the project.”

Mitigating Risk
Without Dassault Systèmes’ and INCAT’s help, Zanghi speculates they may have managed to design a stable platform to 700 or 750 mph (1129 or 1210 kph), but doubts they could have broken the record.

“Now, we’ll know we have a stable platform before Ed gets in there and pushes the throttle forward,” he says. “Runs will no longer be seat of the pants testing, but validation of computer models because we can do so much simulation with the software.”

Wallace, who manages and monitors more than 70 sensors on the vehicle that gather physical data such as resonate and force vibration, says many of the design adaptations will now be able to come from solid model testing in a supersonic wind tunnel, rather than using the actual vehicle and Shadle as “guinea pigs” in desert ground tests.

“This will improve safety 100 percent and shortens our cycle time from where we’re at today to breaking the world land speed record,” he says. “Using CATIA, we can eliminate all of the giant unknowns right at the trans-sonic stage. Basically it mitigates the risk.”

The North American Eagle team hopes to make its first attempt to break the record in the fall of 2007.

Focus on INCAT
INCAT, founded in 1989, is a Tata Technologies company and is an international provider of solutions for Product Lifecycle Management, creating value through Global Delivery and a pragmatic approach that helps clients realize superior products. INCAT is headquartered in the United States, Germany and India.

CATIA®, DELMIA®, ENOVIA® and SIMULIA® are registered trademarks of Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries in the US and/or other countries. Images courtesy of North American Eagle, Inc.© Copyright Dassault Systèmes 2007.

All Rights Reserved.
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The Dassault Systèmes home page can be found at www.3ds.com.
For more information on North American Eagle, Inc., visit www.landspeed.com.
For more information on INCAT, visit www.incat.com.