Tata Motors Chooses ESI’s Sheet Metal Forming Simulation Software

By DE Editors

Based on a noise-vibration-harshness (NVH) study showing that maximum engine noise comes from the oil sump, Tata Motors, an automotive company in India, has selected PAM-STAMP 2G, ESI’s Sheet Metal Forming Simulation Suite, to investigate and optimize its oil sump concept.

The main objective was to reduce noise by implementing “Silent Steel” in the new engine oil sumps for upcoming vehicle platforms. Silent Steel is a three-ply sandwich material in which two sheets of steel are held together by a layer of polymer. The resulting material displays inherent advantages in NVH characteristics, according to the company. Changing the material to the layered Silent steel also meant redesigning the part; changing the shape of the oil sump and adopting new stamping tools.

The initial sump design needed to be prototyped for validation. Although the techniques used for prototyping, including heating and hammering blank sheets, provided fairly accurate product geometry, they were not nearly representative of the stamping process, which would be implemented later on. Feasibility could not be assessed and tooling limitations could not be anticipated with the three-ply material. Due to the progress of vehicle development, additional constraints from interfaces and assembly accumulated.

As constraints from the vehicle environment, from tooling,  and from the material itself were building up, more than 25 different geometry modifications were needed before reaching a satisfactory final design that was good enough to be tried out physically with silent material. PAM-STAMP 2G’s stamping solution was used to validate each design evolution until a defect-free, feasible solution was reached.

“With simulation solutions such as PAM-STAMP 2G, simple and easy-to-manufacture part design proves very cost-effective and without compromise in terms of quality,” says Brian D’ Cruz, program manager, Tata Technologies. “The constructive and positive team effort leads to unique cost-effective solutions that could have been discarded as unfeasible without the synergized effort of tooling and product designers.”
  
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Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.