NEEDHAM, MA — PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) The Product Development Company®, announced that SEAT Sport, the motor sport division of the Spanish car manufacturer SEAT based in Barcelona, has won this year’s FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) in a car developed with PTC software. Body, chassis and engine of the popular SEAT Leon were redesigned and optimized using PTC’s Product Development System (PDS), including its integrated 3D CAD/CAM/CAE software, Pro/ENGINEER, and content and process management software, Windchill. Thanks to PTC’s leading technology, SEAT Sport has experienced continuous improvement of the cars’ performance over the last years, winning the Driver’s and the Manufacturer’s titles in 2008 for the first time.
The FIA WTCC is similar to Formula One, but for real world cars that have to be produced in at least 25,000 units a year. To safeguard competition among manufacturers and restrict development costs, regulations of what components may be changed and to what extent are stricter than in any other FIA competition. Form and thickness of the shell, for instance, have to be identical to the commercial car, though it is permitted to improve aerodynamics. The components of a suspension may be substituted by similar parts of different materials, but the structural concept has to be the same. The new 280 hp 2000cc turbo diesel engine, must be taken from serial production, but moving parts such as crankshafts, flywheels, pistons, etc., may be fine-tuned to enhance performance and reliability.
Engineers at SEAT Sport relied heavily on Pro/ENGINEER to redesign the engine and suspension, to create the tubular structure that reinforces the cockpit and to model the complex free form surfaces of wings and body components destined to enhance the aerodynamics. All critical components were simulated under worst case conditions, using the closely integrated thermal and structural analysis tools. The unique capabilities in the Pro/ENGINEER Behavioral Modeling Extension (BMX) allowed them to optimize the geometry of some parts under physical constraints such as weight and mass inertia in a matter of minutes. “PTC’s Product Development System has strongly contributed to shorten our design iterations and to get things right the first time. It allowed us to bring a competitive car to the circuit in only five months”, said Jaime Puig, managing director of SEAT Sport.
From Formula One to NASCAR to America’s Cup sailing, the world’s best performance teams partner with PTC to support their advanced and demanding design, development and manufacturing projects. PTC is extremely successful in the various international Touring Championships which require fast adaptation of the production cars to the racing requirements. Recently Audi Sport won the international DTM championship in an Audi 4 DTM car developed and optimized with PTC technology.
::Design World::
Source: :: Design World ::
