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Designing better ionization gauges for high-vacuum applications

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By Alan Petrillo, COMSOL

Semiconductor manufacturing, particle physics research, and other valuable processes occur in high-vacuum or ultra-high-vacuum (HV/UHV) conditions. To help develop a better ionization gauge for measuring pressure in HV/UHV environments, instrument manufacturer INFICON of Liechtenstein used multiphysics modeling to test and refine its impressive new design. The Ion Reference Gauge 080 (IRG080), shown in Figure 1, resulted from an international project coordinated by the European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (EMPIR) to develop a better tool for quantifying pressure in HV/UHV environments.

“At HV/UHV pressures, there are not enough particles to force a diaphragm to move, nor are we able to reliably measure heat transfer. This is where we use ionization to determine gas density and corresponding pressure,” said Martin Wüest, head of sensor technology at INFICON.

INFICON Ion Reference Gauge 080
Figure 1. INFICON used COMSOL’s Multiphysics modeling software to design the Ion Reference Gauge 080 to measure pressure in high-vacuum or ultra-high-vacuum applications. Image provided by INFICON.

The most commonly used HV/UHV pressure-measuring tool is a Bayard–Alpert hot-filament ionization gauge placed inside the vacuum chamber. The heart of this instrument consists of the filament (or hot cathode), the grid, and the ion collector. Its operation starts with supplying low-voltage electric current to the filament, causing it to heat up. As the filament becomes hotter, it emits electrons that are attracted to the grid, which is supplied with higher voltage. Some electrons flowing toward and within the grid will collide with any free-floating gas molecules circulating in the vacuum chamber. Electrons that collide with gas molecules form ions that flow toward the collector. This measurable ion current in the collector will be proportional to the density of gas molecules in the chamber.

“We can then convert density to pressure, according to the ideal gas law,” Wüest said. “Pressure will be proportional to the ion current divided by the electron current, divided by a sensitivity factor that is adjusted depending on what gas is in the chamber.”

While the operational principles of these devices are sound, their calibration is too easily compromised by routine use and handling. Along with their sensitivity to heat, the core components of a Bayard–Alpert gauge can become easily misaligned. This can introduce measurement uncertainty of 10 to 20% — an unacceptably wide range of variation.

The project team chose INFICON’s IE514 extractor-type gauge as the current best practice for ionization gauge design. Francesco Scuderi, an INFICON engineer specializing in simulation, used the COMSOL Multiphysics software to model the IE514.

“After constructing the model geometry and mesh, we set boundary conditions for our simulation,” said Scuderi. “We are looking to express the coupled relationship of electron emissions and filament temperature, which will vary from approximately 1400 to 2000° C across the length of the filament. This variation thermionically affects the distribution of electrons and the paths they will follow.” (Figure 2)

INFICON IE514 simulation results using COMSOL Multiphysics.
Figure 2. The IE514 simulation showed the filament temperature (left) and the electric potential surrounding the grid structure (right).

Next, the model was used to calculate the percentage of electrons that collide with gas particles. From there, ray tracing of the resulting ions was performed, tracing the ions’ paths toward the collector (Figure 3).

NFICON IE514 ray tracing models using COMSOL Multiphysics.
Figure 3. Ray tracing models showed the simulated paths of electrons (blue) and ions (red) in the IE514.

“We can then compare the quantity of circulating electrons with the number of ions and their positions. From this, we can extrapolate a value for ion current in the collector and then compute the sensitivity factor,” said Scuderi.

INFICON’s model did an impressive job of generating simulated values that closely aligned with test results from the benchmark prototype. This enabled the team to observe how changes to the modeled design affected key metrics, including ionization energy, the paths of electrons and ions, emission and transmission current, and sensitivity.

The end product of INFICON’s design process, the IRG080, incorporates many components as existing Bayard–Alpert gauges, but key parts look quite different. For example, the new design’s filament is a solid suspended disc, not a thin wire. The grid is no longer a delicate wire cage but made from stronger-formed metal parts. The collector now consists of two components: a single pin or rod that attracts ions and a solid metal ring that helps direct electron flow away from the collector and toward a Faraday cup. This arrangement, refined through ray tracing simulation, improves accuracy by better separating the paths of ions and electrons (Figure 4).

INFICON IRG080 final model using COMSOL Multiphysics.
Figure 4. Shown here is a COMSOL model of the final IRG080 gauge.

INFICON built 13 prototypes that underwent evaluation by the project consortium. Testing showed that the IRG080 achieved the goal of reducing measurement uncertainty to below 1%. Regarding sensitivity, the IRG080 performed eight times better than the benchmark.

Of course, this success was not the team’s alone. INFICON benefited from its partners’ insights and support, and in turn, the broader scientific and manufacturing community will benefit from more consistent measurements of HV/UHV conditions.

Visit COMSOL’s user story gallery to read the full case study, Elevating the performance of ionization gauges with simulation.

COMSOL
www.comsol.com

INFICON
www.inficon.com

Simcenter helps streamline electrification engineering projects

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The latest release of Simcenter software for mechanical simulation helps streamline electrification engineering projects, assists new aircraft meet margins of safety, simplifies durability testing across many industries and more.

“Addressing complex engineering challenges such as developing products that are more powerful, yet greener, lighter yet stronger requires a fully-integrated CAE solution,” said Jean-Claude Ercolanelli, Senior Vice President, Simulation and Test Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “The latest release of Simcenter offers a host of powerful enhancements to help engineers meet those challenges efficiently and significantly faster than ever before, whether that is getting tire contact simulations solved 45% quicker or reducing airframe structure preprocessing by up to 80%.

The highlights in this release are applicable across all industries and workflows and bring new functionality to the Simcenter family of products. Highlights include:

For those exploring Additive Manufacturing (AM), build process simulation is a must, particularly when dealing with metals-based powder-bed fusion production methods. The complex nature of these processes usually require the AM engineer to collaborate with an experienced CAE expert. The latest release of Siemens’ Simcenter 3D software introduces a simplified application for simulation of the powder-bed fusion (PBF) build process that is easy to use for engineers without in-depth CAE expertise. Using a robust voxel-based mesh in the background, it can quickly model and simulate the PBF build process, allowing engineers to gain a good understanding whether a part will build successfully. More detailed analysis can then be performed by CAE experts also using Simcenter 3D, thus enhancing collaboration.

Following on from the introduction of the ability to launch simulations on remote HPC systems directly from within Simcenter 3D, engineers now have the ability to review simulation results directly from the Remote Simulation interface. This helps engineers determine if simulation studies ran correctly before transferring large results files back to a local workstation for in-depth evaluation.

It is now possible to model rigid surfaces and porous materials in a free-field simulation. This means that seats and other absorbing surfaces can be modeled as heavy air or a real porous material, while the rest of the cabin is modeled with regular air fluid elements.

Electrification is a major trend across the Automotive industry and development of new Electric Vehicle (EV) powertrains tend to be broken into silos for e-motor design, transmission analysis, NVH and acoustics. Simcenter mechanical simulation tools can help automakers break these silos by helping critical load, design and model information to flow easily between each of these disciplines for EV powertrain development. Beyond EV development, additional new capabilities in this release improve simulation of other automotive applications from NVH, to tires, to windshield wiper performance. Highlights includes:

–The new contact pattern display in Simcenter 3D helps analyze wiper contact patterns. By modeling the wiper as a flexible body combined with contact elements, the new contact pattern display will show easy to interpret results of the wiper forces across the windshield, allowing the user to learn how consistently or inconsistently the forces are distributed and if the wiper design is working as expected, without the need for costly and time-consuming physical testing.

Finally, the latest release of Siemens’ Simcenter Tire software has an updated road contact algorithm to reduce the large amount of road data exchange required to build the high-fidelity tire models required for driving simulators and Hardware-in-the-Loop set-ups. This means that computational performance is increased by up to 45% enabling the use of high-fidelity tire models in real-time applications.

The stiffness of thin structural panels in airframe structures can change depending on whether the panels are in compression or tension. The new Tension Only Quad element can convert the shells into shear panels if panels go into compression.

For the Aerospace industry, new capabilities reduce the number of models needed to simulate the behavior of thin aircraft skins and perform margin of safety calculations more quickly than ever before. In addition to the new improved airframe applications, Simcenter can help engineers better understand rocket launch dynamics by simulating the liquid sloshing in fuel tanks. Highlights include:

New standard calculation templates have been added to the margin of safety analysis tools within Simcenter 3D. These new templates automatically prefill all the inputs based on a set of rules so the engineer just needs to select the geometry to apply calculation to – removing the traditional reliance of custom script development and the associated maintenance costs.

A new capability in Simcenter Nastran software helps airframe engineers with thin skinned airframe structures that have different stiffness behavior depending on the load case; tension (membrane) vs. compression (shear). Today, engineers typically create multiple models and properties to account for all the different loading conditions. The new tension-only-quad will change from membrane behavior to shear behavior automatically so only a single model is needed to represent an airframe structure – reducing simulation preprocessing time by up to 80%.

While not isolated to aerospace and rocket applications, liquid fuel sloshing dynamics in storage tanks can pose a challenge to guidance systems. In this latest release of Simcenter Nastran, the new incompressible fluid model helps to predict slosh frequencies and hydro-elastic modes. In other industries, it can also be used for evaluating sloshing in cargo, ballast or fuel tanks of large ships​, automotive vehicles, rail cars and much more.

Engineers can now simulate the complex multi-disciplinary magnetostriction effects that cause transformer noise. In addition, you can use these forces directly for noise and vibration assessment without leaving Simcenter 3D

For the Industrial Machinery industry, machine uptime is the prime driver, but machine manufacturers often lack the time or resources to physically test their machines to their limits. Here, Simcenter can help with new capabilities to help durability prediction without the need for specialist knowledge. Highlights include:

Simcenter 3D overcomes the need for separate toolsets and knowledge for proper durability by streamlining and automating strength analysis. Simcenter 3D can automatically calculate the parameters needed to adhere to the industry standard FKM guidelines. This means engineers can conduct durability analysis directly from their stress analysis results, to ultimately help machines meet operation requirements.

Industrial power transformers need to meet strict noise emission standards and qualify the EMAG-Acoustics models for transformer development. Simcenter 3D can now simulate the complex multi-disciplinary magnetostriction effects that cause transformer noise very quickly and accurately. Additionally, the forces calculated can be used both for noise and vibration assessment allowing electromagnetics and acoustic performance simulation within a single environment.

Lastly, industrial machines often have rotating shafts spinning at high speeds which can also vibrate. Engineers use rotor dynamics simulation and Campbell diagrams to understand the vibration frequencies at various operating speeds – but these are only applicable to linear systems. When working with non-linear bushing systems, Simcenter 3D allows the calculation of complex modes during a nonlinear harmonic response to generate a Campbell diagram so that critical speeds of a nonlinear system can be assessed, providing a greater level of understanding of complex rotating components.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com

Using simulation to keep the holidays warm

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By Jason Shar, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Consulting Engineer, Rand Simulation

The holiday season is once again upon us! This means peace on Earth, good will towards others, and embracing the spirit of giving. For those of us living in colder climates, though, this also means the worst of holiday humbugs: your precious coffee, hot cocoa, teas, and toddies cooling at an alarmingly fast rate. This grinch of holiday cheer is known to all, whether naughty or nice, and is a critical problem that needs investigating. Fortunately, the good folks here at Rand SIM decided caroling was not the best use of our time and got to work using computational fluid dynamics to bring comfort and joy (and a little warmth) back to your beverage.

While a Christmas list’s worth of products are available to help keep your beverage hot, nothing quite makes the holidays as happy as a good old-fashioned ceramic coffee cup. Now, this begs the question: does your beverage stay holly-jolly longer when you let it sit on a nearby yuletide table, or is it better to hold on to it? Though we can test this in real life, the cost of two ruined beverages is just too high to bear. Fortunately, ANSYS Fluent allows us to simulate this test case without any waste!

Leveraging SpaceClaim’s powerful geometric generation features, two models were quickly created. The first featured a coffee cup full of your favorite hot beverage sitting undisturbed on a flat surface (Fig. 1A). A helping hand was needed for the second model, which was easily found online, imported into SpaceClaim, positioned into place, and mirrored to give your favorite beverage some extra holiday cheer (Fig. 1B). Air volumes were created around both models, so the thermal effects could be seen a bit more clearly.

The simulations were set up by modeling convection with care in Ansys Fluent, and made use of the Boussinesq approximation for air density. Each beverage started at the perfect 155 °F in room temperature (71 °F), and, after allowing the fluid domains to reach a steady state, were simulated for 30 minutes.

While it’s hard to tell which case gave the best present, we can instantly see that the thermal plume generated by the hands might help keep the Winter Wonderland from our drink.

With monitor reports, we shall play! Simulations give us the added benefit of measuring anything, and everything, we could ever want. I investigated the temperature of the beverage both in its volume (Fig. 2A) and on its surface (Fig. 2B), and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a real reason to deck the halls!

It seems as though holding on to the cup keeps the beverage a little warmer after 30 minutes (0.1% and 0.3% increase in volume- and surface-averaged temperature, respectively, vs. letting it sit on the table), with the added benefit of warming one’s hands on a cold winter’s day.

Happy holidays, and drinking, to all, and to all a good night!

 

Jason A. Shar is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) consulting engineering at RandSim. He is a former recipient for the STEM fellowship awarded from the Ohio Space Grant Consortium hosted by NASA, and was a sponsored postdoctoral researcher through Kennesaw State University. Prior to breaking out in industry, he had been involved in academia for at least 10 years and had recently earned his PhD in Engineering with a focus in Medical and Biological Systems from Wright State University. During this time, he developed a wealth of experience related to learning and the dissemination of knowledge. His training and research experience have provided him with strong and broad backgrounds in the fields of mechanical engineering, numerical modeling, including CFD, finite element analysis, and fluid-structure interaction, and clinical image processing. As a result of this breakthrough research, he was able to publish 5 peer-reviewed articles in high-quality journals (average impact factor: 4.127, 37 citations), co-author one book chapter, and presented 12 papers at national and international conferences. Notably, he was awarded a top spot, twice, in an international conference’s bachelor’s and PhD student paper competitions.

For your Halloween fun – simulating flame in a pumpkin

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Adam Weaver, Director of Engineering, Rand Simulation

We’re getting into the spirit here at RandSim, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to play around with combustion modelling in Fluent. Though I had worked for many years in the turbomachinery CFD space, I was focused on the aero/thermal side, working either in heat transfer modelling of the cooled blades, or in the compressor/turbine aerodynamics. That is to say – upstream or downstream of the combustor, but never the combustion itself. Others on my team have done combustion modelling, so I figure I’d give it a try!

Once I dove in, I found it followed much of the familiar path of learning something new in ANSYS. I start out intimidated by what I don’t know until I crack open the user guide, put one mouse click in front of the other and soon enough I’m looking back at the end-result wondering why it took me so long to try. I thought I’d chronicle a bit of my path here, not on the specifics of combustion modelling, but more on the journey of learning a new feature in ANSYS.

First, I started where I’m very familiar, geometry modelling and meshing. I found a model file of a pumpkin online, and it imported into SpaceClaim cleanly and passed all geometry checks. It did have a removable lid, but for my purposes I didn’t need it, so I merged the bodies together. Then I cut a hole in the top, and added a cylinder in the middle to represent a candle with a small, indented surface to act as the fuel inlet. Last, I grabbed an image of our RandSIM logo and overlayed it on the pumpkin and traced out a cut in the pumpkin face.

Pumpkin geometry in SpaceClaim using image projection to cut logo

I then created an air volume around it, named all my surfaces and proceeded into Fluent meshing. From there, I used the watertight meshing workflow with Poly-Hexcore selected as the volume fill. I used mostly default settings for the mesh, with the exception of increasing the number of buffer layers to 6 to give a bit more mesh quality around where I expected a dancing flame and airflow around the pumpkin.

Mosaic Mesh of Pumpkin created using Watertight Meshing Workflow

So far, this was all familiar territory, but once I got into Fluent and was preparing to set up the combustion model, I knew I needed to get some material to reference. Luckily ANSYS has some fantastic places to find this information. The very first thing I did was select the Non-Premixed Combustion model within the Species dialog box and click the Help button. This (like the Help button in all dialog boxes) sent me directly to the relevant section in the Fluent User’s Guide, and described the meaning and use for each button or input field on this box. Furthermore, for when I need a bit more information on the mathematical models used, (such as the Diffusion Flamelet Models), I can click on those relevant links to be sent to the Fluent Theory Guide.

Example Snippet from Fluent Theory Guide

 

The user guide is really the best way to get quick info for specific setup options when working through a problem, but for my case, I was not aware of where to start and needed a bit more of a workflow demonstration. For that, I turned to the Ansys Learning Hub. I navigated to the Fluids Building and found a learning room specifically for Fluent Combustion Modelling with a few instructor-led recordings, and folders of training material with lecture slides and workshops. If I wanted to become more deeply involved in combustion, I would go through all the content there, but for now I just wanted to get a feel for the Non-Premixed combustion model, so I navigated to that folder and brought up both the lecture slides and the workshop slides. The workshop was reasonably close to my scenario (though obviously not of a pumpkin), so I was able to start there and just apply the settings they used to my problem with a few slight modifications, referencing the lecture slides whenever I needed clarification on what a setting meant.

For post processing, I created a few scene views where the flame structure itself was visualized via multiple levels of iso-surfaces around the combustion by-products. And then I just colored those with the “flame” contour type for a good visual. I set the animation to export every timestep and then saved the video file at the end.

In addition to creating a fun Halloween visual, this serves as a great case study in how easy it is to learn something new in Ansys by using the quick access available resources. The user and theory guides provide for quick reference of specific input fields and features, and the learning hub provides deeper descriptions for specific workflows and physics types. It doesn’t take long to learn something new, so feel free to experiment and let us know if you would like further information on anything you find!

 

 

Siemens boosts collaboration and performance with Solid Edge 2023

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Siemens Digital Industries Software announced the latest release of Solid Edge software for product design, engineering and manufacturing, bringing a new streamlined user experience, greater interoperability with the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio and greater capability and collaboration across many industry workflows.

“Alongside our work to bring innovative technology and capability to each release of Solid Edge, covering everything from 3D design through advanced CAM and into technical publications, it’s key that we also evolve how we make these capabilities available to our community,” said John Miller, Senior Vice President, Mainstream Engineering Software, Siemens. “We’re now introducing new licensing options designed to better meet the changing business needs of small and medium-sized manufacturers, providing greater flexibility, more value and, with Xcelerator Share, greater collaboration and speed.”

Solid Edge’s new look and feel brings a modern update to include more intuitive ways of working, greater personalization options and improved modeling workflows. Updates to the geometry definition tools in Solid Edge include synchronous technology applied to traditional ordered history-based parts and parts created using convergent modeling (using generative design or from 3D scans) can be used in simulations without the need for additional conversion.

Solid Edge 2023 also unlocks the power of design data while future proofing customers’ work – data from Solid Edge can be transferred between other solutions in the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, including NX Mechatronics Concept Designer (MCD) and Process Simulate. Solid Edge 2023 also leverages Siemens’ leadership in Model Based Definition (MBD), with a new Solid Edge Advanced PMI add-on that delivers high-quality consistent dimensioning for downstream applications that can take advantage of 3D annotated product data models.

The new Solid Edge Inspector add-on brings tools to automatically identify, label, and extract critical design and manufacturing characteristics for inspection and metrology purposes, automatically generates high-quality inspection data and reports that facilitate communication in downstream manufacturing processes.

New advanced manufacturing capabilities include new Roughing for 5-Axis Machining in Solid Edge CAM Pro, a new 4-axis Rotary Machining add-on and new wire EDM functionality. For those working at the leading edge of machining, the new Smart Machine Kits library provides easy access to standardized, professionally built machine simulation kits, enabling machinists to get up and running with full machine simulation in a fraction of the time typically needed.

Also introduced with Solid Edge 2023, Solid Edge SaaS brings value-based licensing combined with cloud-connected, anywhere access through Xcelerator Share. The new flexible licensing option available through a Solid Edge SaaS subscription allows capabilities to be added when needed, providing access to integrated add-ons for generative design, point cloud visualization, electrical routing, PCB collaboration, advanced simulation and much more. All of these can be easily mixed and matched with a flexible token system.

Meanwhile, product engineering data can be stored securely in the cloud and easily shared by teams and wider value chain, anywhere, anytime, on any device using Xcelerator Share. Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities can be used to see that same data in the context of the real world.

Learn more about the updates to Solid Edge at siemens.com/solidedge2023

Siemens Digital Industries Software

Immersive Design—A virtual reality case study

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A new Adidas maker space—located inside a giant, digital sneaker—features virtual-reality 3D design tools for long-distance design collaboration.

Jean Thilmany, Senior CAD Editor

When Adidas designers were tasked with creating a seamless sneaker, they donned their Oculus headsets and got to work in the virtual world.

The team met regularly in a large, footprint-shaped studio that existed only in a virtual world entered through the Oculus. Of course, each team member was really in separate physical spaces, but with the help of the headsets and the immersive world, they felt as though they were meeting in real life.

The move dramatically slashed time spent creating an initial mock-up: from 21 days to less than one day, says Paul Sholz, Adidas senior footwear designer.

“In the design process, you create boards to inspire you and you brainstorm together. What we did in this virtual environment was the same, but we designed the actual product,” he says.

The Harden Vol. 5, the debut shoe in the Adidas Futurenatural line of molded, seamless sneakers. Credit: Adidas

Scholz and his colleagues spoke in November 2021 at the online Around Conference. The conference sponsor, Gravity Sketch, makes a 3D-design platform hosted in virtual reality, which is the tool Adidas used to help design its Futurenatural shoes. The company gave the same name to its range of tools accessible within the immersive environment.

The one-piece, seamless sneaker line just debuted, about 18 months after the design team’s initial virtual meeting. The Futurenatural sneakers are molded rather than sewn. That is, the upper is fused to the sole with high pressure and heat to create what looks like one continual shoe, with no obvious break between the top and the bottom.

Traditionally, footwear designs often work in two-dimensions, extrapolating 2D lines to form lateral views of the proposed shoe. But building-out designs in the 3D virtual environment makes a mockup materialize more quickly, says Robert Stinchcomb, Adidas creative designer. He played a lead role in bringing the virtual system into the company.

Designers wear Oculus headsets to design in 3D with Gravity Sketch software. They feel as if the design is floating in front of them, inside a virtual world, and they can easily make updates and changes to that design. Credit: Gravity Sketch

“Now it’s down to showing up at work at nine and at 3 pm having a mockup at the point where you could see everything and talk about ‘let’s switch the layering here,’” Stinchcomb says.

The mockup is an early-stage design “almost like a napkin sketch,” he adds. “This is a place we sketch out designs before fleshing them out, before we make a sample. And we’re doing it in a room that is super collaborative where we can talk to each other even though we may not even be in the same country.”

The team can quickly come up with 10 or 15 sneaker concepts, says Arnau Sanjuan, Adidas design director, footwear innovation.

“It’s easy to see how designs would look, to play around with them, to brainstorm ideas together quickly,” he says.

The Futurenatural studio looks much like a virtual reality game. Designers move about in the virtual world—moving between a series of “stations”— the same way they would any virtual-reality game in which avatars work together.

Gravity Sketch makes a 3D-design platform hosted in virtual reality, which is the tool Adidas used to help design its Futurenatural shoes.

The first stop is for design. Here, designers create the 3D model of the shoe. Surfaces are added at a second stop. Then it’s on to detailing and rendering. All before a physical prototype is created.

Because the shoe is easy to see and understand, the finished mockup can be immediately shared with manufacturers and marketing people for their feedback. They needn’t have an Oculus, as the designs can be captured and shared via other methods. Suggested changes are quickly made within the virtual environment.

James Harden’s foot
The mockup starts with the human foot. But for Futurenatural, the company took another tack. Like many shoemakers, the company had been using a generic last—the term for a 3D model of the foot—meant to represent the common sneaker wearer. For the Futurenatural line, Adidas wanted a better fit.

Adidas scanned thousands of people’s feet, including those of professional athletes. Of course, the popular shoemaker already had prints of athletes who have promoted their own Adidas sneaker in the past. James Harden, basketball player for the Brooklyn Nets is among those elite players. The Supernatural line debuted with the player’s fifth-signature basketball sneaker, Harden Vol. 5.

The engineers pulled together all types of feet—large sizes, small, narrow, wide, to best represent the foot. From that, they developed a new “last.”

Designers make their first foray into the Gravity Sketch virtual environment to fit the last with experimental sneaker concepts. Here is where they play with articulated lines in the 3D environment, rather than extrapolating view and fit from a 2D print, Stinchcomb says. They can rotate the view to see how the shoe would look, from the top, bottom, and sides.

At this first stop in their virtual environment, Stinchcomb and fellow designers work out new ideas for a sneaker’s footpad and play around with ways the upper might be molded and pressed. They sculpt arches and add padding to the sole in areas where the foot would benefit from reinforcement.

Collaboration is a key part of this design, with the designers talking back-and-forth in the virtual world as they gesture at parts and play around together with design, Stinchcomb says.

“We take a shoe and explode it and invite people into the space and spec out every single detail. We can blow it up to the size of warehouse and they can swim around the shoe, doing a deep dive on every part,” he says.

“At such an early stage, we can discuss complex details within the form,” he adds. In fact, these early iterations hold enough information to be fleshed out even further, which takes place at the next stage, or station: surfacing.

This is where the skeleton comes together and where volumes are defined, Stinchcomb says. Here, designers wrap their shoe to simulate the material they have in mind for end use. At this step, they create a continuous, lifelike surface with the help of SmoothKit software to sharpen effects.

The team also uses Adobe Substance Painter to “get the feel of the material” and to shade the image so it looks “as realistic as possible,” says Marius Jung, senior design.

Because the footwear industry makes heavy use of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, these new tools were a bit of a departure for the team, he says.

“In the past, we’d spend hours creating the right shadows and lighting, and now we’re able to speed that up and dive right into detailing like we’ve never been able to before,” he says.

When designers are satisfied with the shape and look of the shoe, they move to the next area within the virtual design space. At this juncture, they add details like laces and lace loops to their continuous surface. The team then renders the illustration with KeyShot software to give the image a photorealistic, lifelike quality.

At this stage, the team can share the image with other Adidas departments, mainly marketing and manufacturing. These teams offer their suggestions long before a final virtual prototype, much less a physical prototype, is created, says Marius Jung, senior designer. Their input is important, because the Supernatural line is a step apart from the usual. Designers need to know, and need to know early: can the manufacturer make a mold for this shoe using the designated materials? Will buyers be delighted or dismayed with this form for a new integrated sole?

Members of those teams can be invited into the virtual world if they have access to an Oculus. If not, the images can be shared on a desktop, Jung says.

Adidas worked with one of its factories to develop a new production process for the new shoe. During design, representatives from that manufacturer weighed in with tooling ideas. They also offered feedback about how they might produce the welting and lace loops. Marketers made suggestions brand placement and other features.

Mutual maker space
The Futurenatural design team had been working together almost a year in March 2020 when the COVID pandemic forced many companies to move employees to home offices. Some engineering and design businesses stuttered a bit as they found new ways to collaborate outside an office.

Even people regularly tied by collaboration software might have felt a hiccup as they accessed software on their home computers, in their home spaces. Meanwhile, he and his Adidas teammates stepped right back into their familiar space -the virtual office and maker space within the virtual shoe, says Arnau Sanjuan, design director of footwear innovation.

“I’ve always been one to be in the workshop figuring things out with my hands and working with materials,” he says. “I found my work in 3D could replace those things. We work together in that world so closely.”

Scholz too emphasized the inventive atmosphere that prevailed within the digital footprint.

“The virtual space kept the creativity and the spirit alive during the pandemic,” he says. “It’s just a fun, intuitive and playful way to create serious products.”

And that playfulness showed with the debut of the Harden Vol. 5 in January 2021 and the ensuing Futurenatural products, which feature polka dots, splotches and paint-like splurges in a number of patterns and colors, wavy soles, and an upper that melds seamlessly with the bottom of the shoe for an almost sock-like look.

In the future, the line is expected to include more materials and new designs. The shoes will, of course, be designed within the digital shoeprint using Gravity Plus 3D design technologies.

“The virtual reality system definitely demonstrated its value,” Sanjuan says. “Now everyone wants to try it. Because the learning curve is so easy, it’s spreading like wildfire to put 3D in anyone hands who wants it.”

Those newcomers are welcome, he adds.

“Especially at big, grand company like Adidas, it’s important to inject new processes into footwear and to look at things in a different way, Sanjuan says.

Latest updates to Siemens’ Simcenter 3D 2022.1

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Siemens Digital Industries Software announced the latest update to Siemens’ Simcenter 3D software, part of Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio of software and services. Among the new capabilities, Simcenter 3D offers increased support for turbomachinery modeling, a dedicated drop test application for handheld devices, tightly integrated topology optimization with the NX Design environment, and a new acoustic solution method that is up to 10 times faster than standard methods.

Siemens’ Simcenter 3D 2022.1 release focuses on helping engineers overcome challenges in four key areas:

Model the complexity: The ability to model and understand complex physical phenomena is at the forefront of this release. Simcenter 3D’s industry-leading solution for the turbomachinery industry has been extended with additional thermal multiphysics, rotordynamics and thermal fatigue capabilities to more accurately capture the complex physics happening within these machines. A new dedicated set of tools to simulate spiral bevel gears, as often found in automotive differentials, enables accurate, system-level NVH analysis on these mechanisms to reduce gear whine. Additionally, a new dedicated application simplifies and streamlines the drop-test simulation process for electronic and other handheld devices for engineers who are not simulation experts.

Time varying thermal fatigue helps you understand durability over real operational cycles and reduce modeling time by reading temperatures and stresses/strains from FE results.

Explore the possibilities: Acoustics auralization capabilities allow engineers to not only simulate but also listen to the acoustics/sound within the context of the end-user’s experience. Engineers can now mix all contributing sounds and listen to the combined acoustics results to answer questions such as “What will a loudspeaker sound like when you put it in a car and combine it with background noise from the engine, HVAC, wind and road?” In this release, topology optimization is now more tightly integrated with the NX Design environment so that simulations are ‘replayable’ and become easier for designers to create lightweight, yet structurally capable designs.

Get acoustics results up to 10X faster with new high performance boundary element method with adaptive order solution (BEMAO).

Go faster: Two core updates enable our customers to break new ground more quickly than ever before. The new high-performance boundary element method with adaptive order solution (BEMAO) used for acoustics simulation is up to 10 times faster compared to the standard boundary element method, while new load case filtering for aerostructures allows engineers to quickly determine the final critical list of load cases from the thousands of load cases experienced in an airframe.

Topology optimization capabilities for designers have an even tighter, more intuitive integration within the Siemens’ NX environment.
Define a flexible build plate for additive manufacturing process simulation to calculate stress build-up and see how the build plate will deform after removing the fixture bolts.

Stay integrated: Simcenter 3D now connects with Xcelerator Share for Xcelerator as a Service (or XaaS) subscribers. The Xcelerator Share collaborative cloud environment helps users or distributed workgroups seamlessly share files and communicate results to aid ad-hoc collaboration. Finally, engineers can now launch simulations remotely to any workstation or HPC cluster right from their desktop.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
siemens.com/software

3D design platform makes collaboration easy

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Gravity Sketch, the spatial 3D design platform, announced the launch of its virtual collaboration space, LandingPad Collab, making it available to designers and their teams, anywhere in the world.

LandingPad Collab, which is free to use, gives design teams the ability to create a personal collaboration room in which they can invite team members to easily communicate, collaborate and design at scale in 3D. Designers can immerse themselves virtually to create life-size models and review products such as a pair of trainers, a new car or a bike, which can then be viewed, modified and commented on from any location.

LandingPad Collab allows up to four people to collaborate on a design at the same time, breaking down geographical barriers by bringing teams together in a virtual space and rapidly accelerating workflows. During the pandemic, this enabled teams to continue working on 3D products without the need to travel and meet in person.

Gravity Sketch enables designers to break down the barriers of the computer screen to design and model naturally using their hands. Wearing a VR headset, they are transported into a virtual workspace, where with the use of a remote controller, they can create end-to-end 3D designs. LandingPad Collab provides industrial designers with the ability to make unlimited adjustments, as well as to present final designs virtually before going through the manufacturing process.

Gravity Sketch has made the feature free in response to unprecedented demand from the design community who are increasingly eager to share virtual spaces and communicate their ideas more effectively. It also allows the company to further its mission to democratise digital 3D design. The first step towards this was when the Gravity Sketch platform was made free to everyone at the start of the year.

LandingPad Collab features include the ability to create or import 3D models, have real-time voice conversations with people in the virtual room, edit each other’s work, move around at scale or zoom in and out. Users also gain access to 1GB of cloud-saves through the company’s accompanying free LandingPad platform.

Gravity Sketch is an intuitive 3D design platform that allows cross-disciplinary teams to express ideas, create, collaborate and review spatially. For the first time, Industrial designers can design in 3D from start to finish, rapidly improving the speed to market of products, from cars to footwear. For businesses, adopting the technology also helps to attract new design talent in an increasingly competitive market. In addition to Adidas, other brands already using the platform include Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen.

Gravity Sketch
www.gravitysketch.com

New JEDEC industry standard for electronics cooling simulation

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Siemens Digital Industries Software announced the establishment of JEP181—a neutral file, XML-based standard from the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, which is the global leader in standards development for the microelectronics industry. The JEP181 standard simplifies thermal model data sharing between suppliers and end-users in a single file format called ECXML (Electronics Cooling eXtensible Markup Language).

The new standard was created to meet a significant challenge for electronics manufacturers: as increasingly powerful processors allow companies to pack more performance and functionality into their designs, the effective management of heat dissipation and other thermal factors has become essential to the successful design of their next-generation electronics products. Advanced electronics cooling simulation technologies enable the creation of highly accurate thermal models of new product designs. But the absence of a uniform format for the exchange of thermal simulation data throughout supply chains has created unnecessary duplication of effort and the potential introduction of errors into the stream.

Proposed through the JEDEC JC15 committee, the new JEDEC JEP181 standard simplifies thermal model data sharing. With this universal thermal model sharing standard, electronics manufacturers can reduce the time required to simulate and validate their thermal models.

“The JEP181 standard from JEDEC benefits thermal design engineers by providing wider availability of the key data necessary to validate the thermal performance of today’s advanced designs,” stated Ghislain Kaiser, senior director, Intel Corp. “This standardized format will allow more interoperability between engineering teams, leading to substantial time and cost savings by removing design barriers previously common in thermal engineering.”

Thermal model data availability and sharing is one of the key limiting factors in capitalizing on the benefits of thermal simulation throughout the product design process. Countless hours spent on mining product data sheets for thermal information, or re-implementing 2D engineering drawings within thermal simulation tools, can now be replaced by seamlessly importing commercial 3D simulation tools from software suppliers. The JEP181 standard is ideal for emerging technologies and trends such as miniaturization, 2.5D and 3D semiconductor packaging, and 5G technology– all of which demand increased power dissipation density.

“As a leader in industrial software solutions, our contribution to the new JEP181 standard can help drive the digitalization of design data to reduce both time and errors for today’s innovative electronics products,” stated Jean-Claude Ercolanelli senior vice president of Simulation and Test Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Enabling a seamless digitalized software flow can radically increase the efficiency and accuracy of thermal simulation and thus, enhance the performance and reliability of digital twin prototypes and manufactured products.”

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com

Siemens acquires Nextflow Software to speed simulations with advanced meshless technology

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Siemens announced that it has acquired Nextflow Software, an independent provider of advanced particle-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions. Nextflow Software will become part of Siemens Digital Industries Software, where its offering will expand the Simcenter software portfolio, part of the Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio of software and services, with rapid meshless CFD capabilities to accelerate the analysis of complex transient applications in the automotive, aerospace, and marine industries such as gearbox lubrication, tank sloshing or electric motor spray cooling.

“Our customers need to leverage sophisticated simulations earlier and more often in their design process, and this is creating a strong demand for rapid and automated CFD of dynamic gas-liquid flows,” said Jean-Claude Ercolanelli, Senior Vice President, Simulation and Test Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Meshless technology has emerged as a leading solution to greatly reduce the setup and solving times for this class of problems, accelerating time to results and prove the behavior of products at a reduced time and cost.”

Siemens Digital Industries Software is already positioned strongly in the CFD market, providing both CAD-centric and high-fidelity solutions across mechanical and electrical design scenarios. The addition of Nextflow Software’s Smooth-Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) technology into the Simcenter portfolio can enable analysts to leverage the complementary nature of meshless and mesh-based solvers to capitalize on each of their strengths, opening the door to new applications that were previously difficult to address.

“We are very excited to join Siemens and expand the scope of CFD simulation for our customers,” said Vincent Perrier, CEO of Nextflow Software “Today, there is no single validation approach that fits all industrial applications. As engineering problems become more complex and design cycles are shortened, analysts must find the optimal trade-off between accuracy and computation time. Nextflow Software’s SPH solutions nicely complement the existing CFD offering in the Simcenter Portfolio to overcome challenges of complexity and long run-times.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Nantes, France, Nextflow Software is a startup company focused on the development of innovative SPH meshless CFD methods. They have played a critical role in moving SPH from academic labs into the hands of analysts across industries, helping simulate complex transient problems faster and earlier in the product development cycle.

The transaction closed on June 1, 2021. Terms were not disclosed.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com

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