Case Study: Penske achieves faster, first-time-right racecar design and 25% stiffer uprights with ANSYS

Leading Motorsport Team Races to Get Car Design Right the First Time

Penske, a leading motorsports team with a long history at the Indy 500, faced the challenge of meeting strict Indy Racing League (IRL) design rules and a compressed five-month development window that left no room for errors. To accelerate development and validate parts early, Penske combined Pro/ENGINEER CAD with ANSYS finite element analysis (FEA) to analyze designs during the design phase.

Using ANSYS, Penske built solid and shell FEA models in about a week, found an over-flexing upright, and redesigned it to be 25% stiffer at the same weight; ANSYS also enabled rapid composite layup evaluation, cut the number of physical prototypes, shortened time-to-market, and improved steering feedback and on-track performance.

Penske

Chris Kirk

Design Engineer