Altair > Case Studies > BOTTPOWER's Lightweight Motorbike Bracket Design with Altair Software

BOTTPOWER's Lightweight Motorbike Bracket Design with Altair Software

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Technology Category
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Virtual Private Cloud
  • Wearables - Virtual Reality Glasses, Headsets & Controllers
Applicable Industries
  • Cement
  • Equipment & Machinery
Applicable Functions
  • Product Research & Development
Use Cases
  • Onsite Human Safety Management
  • Smart Lighting
About The Customer
BOTTPOWER is a Spanish motorsport engineering company based in Valencia. They specialize in designing and building custom motorbikes for racing and street use. In addition, they design and build parts, systems, and prototypes for other companies. The company is managed by David Sánchez, a mechanical engineer with extensive experience in mechanical design and motorbike racing. He is currently in his 14th season working as a data and race engineer in championships like the CEV – Spanish Championship, World Championship Moto2, and WEC – World Endurance Championship.
The Challenge
BOTTPOWER, a Spanish motorsport engineering company, was tasked with designing a lightweight stay bracket for their motorbike that could withstand main and aerodynamic loads. The goal was to find the optimal weight and stiffness ratio to reduce weight while ensuring safety measures. The challenge was to complete this task quickly in order to showcase the bike at Addit3D, Spain's most important 3D-print fair. Two engineers on the team had experience with Altair, so they chose Altair HyperWorks™ for finite-element analysis (FEA), Altair Virtual Wind Tunnel (VWT) for computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and Altair Inspire™ for topological optimization.
The Solution
The team began with a simple CFD model in VWT to calculate the aerodynamic load. They created a virtual tunnel and placed the windshield in the exact position as it would be on the bike to calculate the aerodynamic loads for the bike while driving at 300 km/h. Using earlier sketches, they created a drawing with the maximum external volume as design space. They then introduced the calculated aerodynamic loads on the design space in Altair Inspire, allowing the software to remove as much material as needed to achieve an optimal weight and stiffness ratio. The engineers used Altair HyperMesh™ to setup an FEA model to study the stress levels, deformations, and safety factors of the part. Meshing the small pieces was accomplished with Altair SimLab™, which is mainly used for the design of solid models using geometrical shapes such as tetrahedrons or hexahedrons.
Operational Impact
  • The final design, thanks to topology optimization with Altair tools, fit perfectly and complimented the rest of the components like the headlights, tachometer, action camera, and windscreen. The new design was lighter and stronger than previous versions and had a cleaner, more appealing shape. The team plans to continue designing light composite parts with Altair tools being key elements in the process. They also plan on conducting aerodynamic development using Altair software before the race bike hits the road.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Increased strength of the bracket
  • Remarkable weight reduction
  • Precise behaviour prediction

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