ALPHA MAGAZINE | Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation

Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation

Brings Design and Analysis Together
A market leader in the rolling stock
industry for short and long haul, passenger and freight rail transportation,
Bombardier Transportation (Quebec,
Canada and Berlin, Germany) entered
the mass transit market in 1974 with a
contract for the Montreal metro. Over
the years, Bombardier Transportation
has grown through internally generated expansion and the acquisition of
other companies with proven designs,
know-how and technologies. Along
with providing complete rail transportation systems, the company also
manufactures locomotives, freight cars,
propulsion and controls, and provides
signaling equipment and systems.
In 1996, through the merger of AEG
and ABB Transportation, a company
called Adtranz was created as a joint
venture between Daimler-Benz (now
DaimlerChrysler) and ABB. The constituent companies of Adtranz had
more than 150 years of experience in
the railway field and regularly set

Use of MSC.Software
Campus License
System key to project
industry standards with innovative
products and new vehicle concepts. In
1999 DaimlerChrysler became sole
shareholder of Adtranz and in 2001
sold the company to Bombardier
Transportation.
The acquisition of Adtranz by
Bombardier Transportation created a
truly global company for the design,
manufacture, and delivery of railway
vehicles and services. By pooling their
complementary capabilities, Bombardier
Transportation is uniquely positioned to
provide innovative solutions to their
customers requirements.
Center of Competencies
Prior to the acquisition by Bombardier
Transportation, Adtranz was nearing
the end of a software harmonization

Dr. Charles Clarke is a CAD/CAM consultant

and writer based in the United Kingdom.

alpha.mscsoftware.com

Volume 1 | Winter 2003

process in design and structural analysis. They had established a Center of

Competencies (CoC) for analysis at
Kalmar, Sweden. When Bombardier
took over, they endorsed the Center of
Competencies concept and appointed
the manager of the CoC, Micko
Bjrck, to be responsible for the CoC
for the whole company. Before the
acquisition, the CoC at Adtranz had
already begun to develop a global presence and could serve as a template for
the whole of the Bombardier
Transportation organization with
regard to harmonizing the software
products in use and how the CoC was
to interact with the divisions. Bjrck is
now responsible for 140 analysis engineers spread over 34 sites worldwide.
The Adtranz harmonization was
almost completed regarding structural
mechanics, says Bjrck. We had only
a few sites left to convert. After the
acquisition, my views on harmonization had not changed they were as
relevant for the new company as they

ALPHA MAGAZINE | Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation

were for Adtranz. I suggested that we

should continue with what we had
started at Adtranz. I showed
Bombardier the benefits of the
MSC.Software Campus License system, and at the same time it became
clear that MSC.Software and
IBM/Dassault Systemes had developed
a closer relationship. As CATIA was
the principal CAD tool in use in the
former Bombardier, it was only logical
to standardize on MSC.Software products and CATIA.
Computer-aided design (CAD) verification by simulation and analysis is an
integral part of every aspect of vehicle
design at Bombardier. Although the
company is currently using CATIA V4
in production, there is a strategy to
move to CATIA V5 during 2004. For
simulation and analysis needs,
Bombardier engineers and designers
have flexible access to MSC.Softwares
portfolio of Virtual Product
Development (VPD) tools, including
MSC.Patran, MSC.Nastran,
MSC.Marc, MSC.Construct,
MSC.Dytran, and MSC.Fatigue,
through MSC.Softwares VPD Campus
License system. This token-based software licensing method provides all the
appropriate software tools whenever
they are needed (see sidebar on page 7).
Without question, the most important feature of the MSC.Software offer
for us is the Campus License system,
which gives us total flexibility in the
way we use our software, says Bjrck.
The co-operation between
IBM/Dassault and MSC.Software is
also very important to us. We always
need good interfaces and Im sure the
new relationship with MSC.Software
will bring more in that regard.
MSC.Software products are easy to use;
the analysts like the interface and are
very comfortable using the system.
Linking Design and Analysis
Design and analysis are very closely
linked at Bombardier. Designers and
analysts interact on a daily basis from
the very early stages of design. On
projects with very experienced designers, the analysts task is much simpler
since many of the load cases are satisfactory in the first design loop. In other
cases, the analysts guide the designers
more closely to get a feasible design.
Because of the variety and complexity
of rail projects, describing the full

We tend to post-process the analytical

runs using MSC.Patran and homegrown post-processors, says Bjrck.
Our own post-processors are used
mainly for fatigue and for sorting load
cases. For a normal carbody there are
about 100 load cases, and maybe
1,000 components our own postprocessors are used to sort out this vast
amount of data and to seek out the
problem areas. This is more a sorting
process than a graphical display
process. The output is a sorted list,
which highlights areas for further
investigation. Each country has their
own requirements with regard to
reporting procedures for regulatory
authorities, so there is no such thing as
a standard report structure.

scope of a typical train project is difficult. Analysis for each new series product usually requires five to 15 analysts
and takes about 12 years, depending
on the size of the project. Many different customer requirements and the
variety of prevailing national and international standards, covering such criteria as track gauges, means there is usually very little design carry-over
between different projects.
At Bombardier we do all sorts of different analyses on a rail product,
explains Bjrck. Among these are normal analyses to ensure that stresses and
deformations are kept within reasonable limits, as well as buckling, eigenfrequency, crash, fatigue and thermal
analysis. We also have internal requirements for handling the carbodies during production, for example, lifting
stresses. There are a number of international and national standards with
which we have to comply.
Bombardier has been doing analysis for
as long as analysis software has existed,
and has built up considerable knowledge and experience that is continuallyused to improve their designs.
Output from one analysis tool is regularly used as input for another.
MSC.Nastran results are post-processed
with MSC.Patran, and Bombardier uses
the static results as input to their own
in-house fatigue tools.

While CATIA is the primary CAD

tool at Bombardier, the kind of geometry imported from CATIA is different
from site to site. Some sites dont even
have access to CATIA yet and generate
the geometry for the analysis themselves using the pre-processors.
Bombardier has different ways of filtering the CATIA data to accommodate the different analyses. Solid geometry is fairly straightforward the
CATIA model can be imported directly and meshed with standard meshing
tools. When a mid-surface model is
required, then either the analyst produces it or Bombardier has another
process at some sites where the designer makes a copy of the CAD model
and transforms it into a mid-surface
model for the analyst. This ensures
congruent surfaces for the analysis. It
also allows small details that would
upset the meshing algorithms, such as
holes and small radii, to be removed
without compromising the master
CAD model.
While most sites use MSC.Patran for
meshing, there are still some sites
using the CATIA meshing module,
which they prefer for their purposes.
Meshing is another area that
Bombardier is hoping will benefit
from the cooperation between
MSC.Software and IBM/Dassault and
its adoption of the CATIA V5 architecture as its common platform for the
simulation environment of the future.
Benefits of Harmonization
Even though its difficult to gauge the
benefits in quantitative terms from the
way we use MSCs software, the mere

alpha.mscsoftware.com Volume 1 | Winter 2003

ALPHA MAGAZINE | Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation

act of harmonizing the software across

all our sites means that collaboration
both within and between the divisions
is much easier and the possibilities to
share work and components are significantly increased, says Bjrck. This
collaboration also extends to human
resources. If everyone is using the same
software, analysts can move around to
respond to increasing workloads in different locations. By having a flexible
analytical human resource pool,
Bombardier can, for example, reduce
the number of contractors they require
from time to time. It also allows us to
rotate analysts regularly to give them a
broader work experience. Due to this
flexible approach, Bombardier can save
between 10 and 20 contractors per year.
This represents about 10 percent of the
human resource budget for analysts.
The increased collaboration and communication between engineers and
analysts has had a direct bearing on
quality. Because of the greater interdivisional involvement and discussion
arising from the harmonization exercise, Bombardier has discovered some
anomalies in certain analytical procedures at some sites. And as they continue to roll out the software to additional sites, harmonizing these procedures is an additional benefit.

fatigue testing, they rarely test full-scale

complete vehicles, but they do test particular components, especially bogies,
in order to verify analysis results, new
designs and/or methods. This testing
runs in the background as analysis continues. A combination of experience
and their analyses highlights critical
components or areas that could potentially cause fatigue problems. In addition, each new product series is monitored throughout its life to measure
and document its fatigue response.
Bombardier already has significant
knowledge capture in their fatigue
tools and is looking to exploit the
knowledgeware functionality in
CATIA to extend their knowledgebased engineering. There are internal
standards for spot welding when the
car bodies are made from stainless
steel. There are different requirements
for spot welding depending on the relative thicknesses of the components to
be welded the size and spacing of the
welds are critical parameters. It would
be ideal if this kind of information was
captured in CATIA. The designer

Because Bombardier is using numerical

methods and simulating testing in the
computer, the company has been able
to reduce the number and sometimes
the size of physical prototype tests.
We do physical impact tests on the
plastic fronts of the rail car bodies by
shooting missiles made from steel
cubes at the vehicles, says Bjrck. If
you can simulate this, most of the
physical testing is not necessary. Crash
testing is another example of where
we, thanks to simulation, rarely do
full-scale testing these days we only
do it occasionally to verify the analysis.
Next Phase: Fatigue
Bombardier plans to harmonize fatigue
tools in another phase of the project.
One of the impediments to fatigue harmonization is the fact that they have to
work with so many different international and national standards.
By doing analysis early in the project,
Bombardier is able to eliminate a significant amount of physical testing. In

alpha.mscsoftware.com

Volume 1 | Winter 2003

could then just specify the spot weld

and the software would sort out the
details, sending the various analytical
parameters of the weld to MSC.Patran.
Similarly, for normal fusion welds, the
appropriate parameters need to be sent
to MSC.Patran to eliminate the need
for manual input. This is an important
quality issue for the future.
At present, Bombardier is concentrating on completing the harmonization
project. The CoC is setting standards
and issuing guidelines and recommendations for analytical procedures and
software at all Bombardier sites.
Harmonization is expected to be completed by mid-2004.
We are very satisfied that with
MSC.Software products we have made
the right choice of CAE software, said
Bjrck. And the harmonization of the
software across all divisions is starting to
yield significant business benefits. The
software provides us with an opportunity to make sure that the designs fulfill
all the requirements before we start to
make the first unit.

ALPHA MAGAZINE | Harmonization at Bombardier Transportation

Design Acceleration, Time and Cost Savings, Increased Collaboration

are Benefits of Innovative VPD Campus License System
MSC.Softwares innovative token-based
Virtual Product Development (VPD)
Campus License System provides easy
access to the companys world-class suite
of simulation technology tools. Tailored
to each unique environment to maximize productivity and stretch engineering budgets, the VPD Campus License
System provides the most effective and
efficient implementation of customers
investment in VPD.

MSC.Software offers two basic methods

of providing software the traditional
per seat method and the VPD Campus
License token-based method. In the traditional method, one software sale
equals one seat/license of that product.
Two seats allow for two simultaneous
uses of that software solution. If a different software solution is needed, a seat
or seats of the new software solution
must be purchased.

MSC.Software first brought the flexibility of a token-based software licensing system to enterprise customers in
the mid-1990s. Since inception, more
than 150 of the companys worldwide
enterprise customers have enjoyed the
flexibility and cost savings offered
under this system. In February 2003,
MSC.Software introduced further
innovations to the campus system,
making it available to all customers by
removing the minimum investment
previously required for participation in
the program.

In the token-based method, a customer

purchases a pool of tokens. Tokens are
checked out from the pool and are used
to access and run a full range of
MSC.Softwares computer-aided engineering solutions. Each individual product feature requires a certain number of
tokens to run. After each use, the tokens
are returned to the pool for other use. If
all the tokens are in use, a batch request
will go into a queue or an interactive
request can be made so that the user may
wait for available tokens on a firstcome/first-served basis. There are many
ways in which the customer can manage
the use of tokens by product, by project, or other.

The VPD Campus License System

allows customers to use our software
products at any time, across development sites around the world, says Bob
Ryan, executive vice president,
MSC.Software. By helping engineering
teams work with the same tools, results
and data, the VPD Campus License
System accelerates the design process
and reduces the time and cost of product development.
Butlers project engineering outsourcing services help clients save money,
and our investment in state-of-the-art
tools such as the VPD Campus License
enables us to deliver great value, says
Edward M. Kopko, chairman and CEO
of Butler International, a leading
provider of TechOutsourcing services.
The MSC.Software tools, which are
an industry standard for aerospace,
defense, heavy equipment and automotive, provide our clients access to tools
that are best-in-class, enabling them to
more fully utilize our design centers as
extensions of their own in order to
improve productivity and reduce timeto-market.

The types of products available under the

VPD Campus License System include:
Unrestricted, unlimited-use products These are MSC.Softwares internally developed software solutions that
are available to all VPD Campus
License customers to use at any time or
as often as needed. There are no restrictions in usage frequency or number of
seats (simultaneous checkouts) for these
products as long as there are enough
tokens to draw from.
Standard and premium optional
products These are software products that depend on the technology of
third-party companies and require a
different cost structure.
Currently, there are approximately 250
different software solutions and features
available under the VPD Campus
License System, including MSC.Nastran,
MSC.Nastran Toolkit, MSC.Marc
(including Marc Mentat), MSC.Patran,
MSC.Dytran, MSC.Mvision,
MSC.Enterprise Mvision (and Mvision
Databanks), MSC.GS-Mesher,

MSC.Acumen, MSC.Akusmod,
MSC.AMS, MSC.Flightloads,
MSC.SuperModel, MSC.SuperForm,
MSC.Explore, MSC.AFEA Enterprise,
and MSC.FEA Enterprise. The 2003
release of MSC.ADAMS has been fully
integrated into the VPD Campus
License System. In addition, much of the
MSC.visualNastran V5i product line
including both structural solutions and
Dynamic Designer are now available
through the system.
Eurocopter has been using
MSC.Nastran for more than 30 years,
and we are very happy to now implement the VPD Campus License
System, says Roland Bubl of the
Eurocopter Group, the worlds largest
helicopter manufacturer. This will
allow us to reduce costs and broaden
the use of MSC.Softwares products in
all of our German subsidiaries, therefore
providing a streamlined development
process and immediate access to software improvements.
The Boeing Company, which uses
MSC.Software VPD software throughout the company to develop and maintain its products, recently signed a milestone corporate agreement with
MSC.Software for a 70,000-token VPD
Campus License. The Boeing Campus
System will be implemented enterprisewide throughout North America.
Ryan notes that all types of companies
can mature their use of VPD through a
campus license. Whether its a largescale global enterprise, a small- or medium-size company with tight budgets
and heavy VPD needs, or a consulting
firm that cant invest in outright perseat purchases, the campus license system offers a flexible, scalable, cost-effective way to take advantage of the full
breadth of MSC.Softwares comprehensive portfolio of simulation software,
he says.
For more information about the VPD
Campus License System, call your local
MSC.Software office or visit
http://www.campus.mscsoftware.com.

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