ANSYS BLOG
October 18, 2023
HPC Brings Significant Value to Automotive Engineering Modeling and Simulation
In a previous blog, we saw that combining Ansys solutions with high-performance computing (HPC) leads to substantial returns on investment (ROI). Let’s take a look at two specific instances in which HPC methods were applied to address engineering challenges in the automotive industry.
Case Study 1: Automotive Material Provider
A chemical compounding company, supplying major automotive manufacturers, invested in HPC resources to iteratively model the development of a ductile structural adhesive. Key parameters such as strength, elasticity, weight, crashworthiness, and regulatory compliance were critical in achieving the desired product performance.
By leveraging a combination of on-premises and cloud-based HPC resources through AMD EPYC processors and Ansys LS-DYNA, the company made a total investment of $1.1 million. The revenue generated from the ductile structural adhesive product line reached $2.4 million, resulting in a gross margin of 66%. The project yielded cost savings through reduced design and manufacturing expenses and increased profits by enhancing competitiveness.
Adopting the AMD-Ansys HPC solution significantly reduced design time and increased the probability of developing a safe and reliable product from the initial design iteration.
“As part of the Ansys product suite, Ansys LS-DYNA and its family of optimization applications have allowed our company to open new markets that were previously inaccessible. Without it, we wouldn't be able to capture and leverage the full range of product behavior we now simulate,” a senior scientist from the company wrote in a survey response.
It’s no surprise that the manufacturer intends to maintain extensive utilization of HPC methods, with a planned budget increase for both on-premises and cloud-based HPC resources. This investment will drive new product development and enable market expansion.
Case Study 2: Transportation and Mobility Company
A transportation and mobility (T&M) company focused on modernizing the industry utilized HPC methods for a data governance project. They aimed to accelerate data cleanup, improve machine learning at scale, optimize compute utilization, and enhance data accessibility for engineers and programmers. The project relied on HPC cloud resources (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) and on-premises hardware equipped with AMD processors and accelerators (AMD EPYC and AMD Instinct). Ansys Fluent was used for engineering modeling and simulation.
The T&M company estimated a three-year investment of approximately $2.75 million in both on-premises and cloud-based HPC resources. This investment yielded approximately $50 million in new revenue and $10 million in incremental profits. Additional qualitative benefits included reduced data requirements for training, elimination of unnecessary data encryption, and improved collaboration across different functions within the company.
“The HPC resources were a key cookbook starting from design and evaluation to testing and deployment; they drove a sense of predictability,” the company’s director of engineering said.
Another case study on an automotive sports team shares the details of its HPC investments. The value derived from those investments, as well as more information on the case studies above, can be found in the white paper “Organizations Realize Significant Value from Utilization of HPC for Automotive Engineering Modeling and Simulation.”