GE Plastics long-standing attack on polyvinyl chloride continues in the Chevy Volt. Flexible Noryl replaces polyvinyl chloride for environmental and weight-saving reasons. Today's cars have over a mile of wiring, which is mostly made with PVC coating. The case against PVC, says GE, is that it contains halogen and releases dioxins when burned. The Noryl coating is also smaller in diameter than the PVC, making it easier for engineers to manipulate wires in the car. The PVC producers have long maintained that PVC is safe when incinerated properly. European regulators have been the most aggressive in attacking the use of PVC.
A new process for laser-welding large-scale, steel-aluminum foam sandwich structures for lightweighting ships, which eliminates intermetallic phase, has been demonstrated.
A major advance in repairing composite structures combining robots and lasers bodes well for commercial aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350XWB, which contain composites in large proportions of their structures.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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