Case Study: Composites Technology Research Malaysia achieves optimized flipper design for aerospace testing with Hexagon

Optimising design of a flipper device for airplane components in production industry

Composites Technology Research Malaysia (CTRM), an aerospace composites manufacturer, faced the challenge of manually flipping and rotating large, heavy aircraft components for quality testing. This process was physically demanding, risked damaging the expensive parts, and required multiple personnel. To mechanize this, they needed to design a specialized "flipper" device but their initial concept, created with generic software, was costly, overly complex, and structurally inefficient.

The vendor, Hexagon, provided a solution using its Adams multibody dynamics simulation software, Patran, and MSC Nastran for FEA. This allowed CTRM's team to simulate and optimize the flipper's design, eliminating redundancies and validating its structural integrity. The final, optimized design achieved by Hexagon's tools weighed 15% less, improved the factor of safety by 23 times over a previous iteration, and significantly reduced material costs, resulting in a highly effective and reliable mechanized flipping system.

Composites Technology Research Malaysia