Altair Enlighten Award Shines A Spotlight On Lightweighting

The automotive sector is certainly no stranger to the concept of lightweighting, and neither is simulation software provider Altair, which has been promoting its CAE suite as a lightweighting tool for years.

But with emerging fuel standards and a continuous push for innovation and cost efficiencies driving the requirements for lightweighting to the next level, Altair, in collaboration with the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), is hosting a competition to encourage awareness and recognize industry achievements in weight reduction.

The 2014 Altair Enlighten Award, now in its second year, is designed to spark innovations and technologies that provide practical design approaches to achieving the mass reductions that are necessary to meet the new, more stringent fuel economy standards, Altair officials said. Last year’s winner was BASF Corporation, which won the top award for the development of its thermoplastic composite front seat pan for the GM Opel.

“For the most part, automotive companies recognize that vehicle lightweighting has to play a dominant role in designing for fuel economy and CO2 reduction,” noted Dave Mason, Altair’s vice president, global automotive, in an interview with Desktop Engineering. “We’ve been involved for 10 or 15-plus years, but there hasn’t been an award that recognized those achievements. We’re trying to create an environment to inspire advancements and collaboration with industry leaders to drive innovation in this area.”

The 2013 Enlighten Award drew entries from automotive OEMs and suppliers worldwide, Mason said, and the hope is to allow these industry leaders to be recognized by their peers for their performance in this critical area of design. In addition, having a formal competition and award should help inspire interest from policymakers, educators, students, and the general public, turning attention to lightweighting and encouraging a community to share their technological advances, he explained.

Each part or component submitted in the competition must be in production within a three-year window, Mason explained, which in the case of this year’s award, means by 2016. “We’re not talking about R&D ideas,” he said, “these need to be commercial successes.”

Mason said Altair comes at lightweighting from two perspectives: Using simulation to help reduce the amount of materials while still meeting vehicle requirements as well as exploring new, advanced materials that can be substitutes for traditional ones as part of the lightweighting process. “Altair is an industry leader in assisting in material reduction,” he says. “We’ve pioneered optimization algorithms which facilitate anyone designing structural components to remove materials and meet design requirements in a lightweight fashion.”

Entry submissions for the 2014 Altair Enlighten Award can be made now through May 23. Finalists will be selected in June and the winners announced at the Center for Automotive Research’s 2014 Management Briefing Seminars to be held August 4-7 in Traverse City, MI.

The judging panel for this year’s award is Dr. Jay Baron, president and CEO of CAR; Dr. Royston Jones, president of Altair ProductDesign Europe; A. Harvey Bell, clinical professor of engineering practice and co-director of the Multidisciplinary Design Program at The University of Michigan; Gary Latham, director of design engineering at Pratt & Miller Engineering; Dr. Imtiaz Haque, founding chair and executive director of the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research; Dr. Clemens Schmitz-Justen, founder and head of strategic consulting at CSJ Schmitz-Justen & Company; and Chris Theodore, president of Theodore & Associates.

Watch this video to hear representatives from BASF, last year’s winner, talk about the company’s lightweighting initiatives.