Case Study: SOLVAY Speciality Polymers improves bow limb fatigue prediction with MSC Software's DIGIMAT

SOLVAY Speciality Polymers - Customer Case Study

SOLVAY Speciality Polymers, a leading world producer of specialty polymers, faced a challenge when a manufacturer using their material found that a new design for injection-molded plastic bow limbs had a reduced fatigue lifetime. The goal was to determine if this premature failure was connected to changes in the manufacturing process. MSC Software, using its Digimat material modeling platform, was engaged to take into account the influence of processing in the lifetime prediction.

MSC Software's solution used Digimat to reverse engineer a material model and compute stresses based on fiber orientation data from the molding leading to a slightly shorter predicted fatigue life, which was attributed to a change in the melt flow creating a stiffer local region. As a result, SOLVAY successfully used this approach to evaluate the endurance of different bow limb designs and clearly demonstrated the critical link between processing and performance.

SOLVAY Speciality Polymers

Laurent Hazard

CAE Senior Specialist