Case Study: Polaris (snowmobile manufacturer) achieves up to 40% lighter structures with Altair's solidThinking Inspire and OptiStruct

Polaris Reduces Weight of Snowmobile Structures up to 40% with solidThinking Inspire and OptiStruct

Polaris, a leading snowmobile manufacturer in Roseau, Minn., faced the challenge of reducing structural weight and cutting the long CAD/FE iteration cycle for chassis designs without compromising performance. To address this, Polaris worked with Altair, leveraging Altair’s solidThinking Inspire and OptiStruct (part of the HyperWorks suite) for early-stage concept generation and topology optimization.

Altair’s solution—coupling solidThinking Inspire for load-path ideation with OptiStruct for topology and manufacturability refinement—halved development iterations (from about 10–12 down to 5–6), reduced the chassis weight by 15–20% overall and achieved 35–40% unit-volume weight savings where aluminum replaced steel. The approach also cut prototype counts, sped up front-end design and made sensitivity studies and licensing simpler for the Polaris team.

Polaris

Rick Kerner

Staff Engineer