Case Study: Tokyo National Museum achieves safer transport of cultural assets with Altair simulation

The Art of Packaging to Protect Cultural Assets

The Tokyo National Museum, custodian of over 113,000 cultural assets, discovered unexpected vibration loads during truck shipments that put priceless artworks at risk. To identify the root cause, the museum partnered with Altair and eXcearch LLC and applied Altair’s multibody dynamics tools (MotionSolve, MotionView and HyperView/HyperGraph) alongside shaker-table and road tests.

Altair’s simulations reproduced the isolators’ nonlinear behavior and matched random and trial‑shipment data, pinpointing coil-spring isolators as the source of resonance in the truck excitation band (10–20 Hz). With Altair’s results the Tokyo National Museum could redesign packaging and select appropriate isolator and cushioning properties to move resonance out of that band, validating solutions across test cases (88 kg and 176 kg boxes, 4–50 Hz sine sweep) without risking actual artifacts.

Tokyo National Museum