EnginSoft - Conference Abstracts

EnginSoft Users' Meeting 2008
Le Tecnologie CAE nell'Industria

“Detailed” versus “Simplified” model: a methodological approach for Gasket Simulations

Abstract

In mechanical components like those designed and produced in Magneti Marelli Powertrain S.p.A., it’s mandatory to have a reliable method to simulate gaskets behavior at mounting and working phases.

For very simple applications, a pure theoretical analysis could be enough, especially at design early stages, but for more complex ones a numerical method is needed, in particular to allow a pure 3d verification of the gasket compression.

Moreover, apart from mounting phase, it’s also important to verify gasket characteristics at working conditions, so taking into account mainly temperature effect, ageing (which has a big impact on gasket material) and vibrations.

For all of these reasons, a full 3d FEM model of gasket and parts coupled with it would be the best solution, but of course, also with today clusters, this kind of model could easily become a very big one, with the quite obvious long simulation time.

In this scenario, Magneti Marelli Powertrain S.p.A. decided to create a simplified FEM model which could give enough information on general behaviour of gasket, and in particular give, as a main result, the most critical zones, at which a more detailed 2d analysis should be carried over to fulfil a good gasket design.

In this paper, the main phases of the above described activity are presented, applied to a real case:

1. Creation of a 3D “DETAILED” FEM model which was used to validate the simplified one
   
2. Creation of the 3D “SIMPLIFIED” model and tuning of chosen set of parameters to reach results similar to “DETAILED” model
   
3. Validation of both models with lab tests results
   
4. Creation of 2D “SUPER-DETAILED” models for critical zones
   

At the end of presented activity, a good methodology has been learnt, which allows Magneti Marelli R&D to simulate these kind of gasket in a very easy and fast way.

A further step in methodology development is coupling the “SIMPLIFIED” model with MODEFrontier, to have a better and faster tuning of the above mentioned parameters, and also to improve gasket design itself.