Case Study: Interlaken Technology Company achieves a 1,500% setup time reduction for bellows forming simulation with Altair HyperWorks

Altair Hyperworks Helps interlaken conduct Efficient bellows forming simulation

Interlaken Technology Company, an engineering firm in Chaska, Minnesota specializing in material formability and hydroforming, needed to develop processes and tooling to manufacture bellows for aerospace OEMs from tubular stock. Faced with long lead times and multiple physical prototypes to evaluate tool geometries, kinematics, process conditions and materials, Interlaken turned to Altair and the Altair HyperWorks platform (including HyperForm, Radioss and HyperView) to shorten development time and enable CAE-driven virtual validation.

Working with Altair, Interlaken implemented a multi-layered tube FEA workflow using HyperForm, Radioss and HyperView to virtually validate tooling, process parameters and springback compensation. The simulations closely correlated with physical tests, enabled many more iterations, and let the team optimize tooling and eliminate defects. Using Altair’s open, automatable tools they built a custom bellows setup that cut CAE setup from a day to a few hours (a 1,500% setup-time improvement), handled bellows with 30+ convolutes, reduced costs and sped time to market.

Interlaken Technology Company

Robb Bass

President