Ferrari Joins Hands with Altair to Develop Futuristic Vehicle Platform

Ferrari is planning to collaborate with Altair to work on a ‘Next Generation’ vehicle platform which is slated to inspire many new flagship models and their derivatives. The announcement underlines the longstanding association between the two companies. Ferrari first started working with Altair more than 10 years ago. Altair is a privately held US company that specializes in the development and application of simulation technology to create and optimize designs, processes and decisions to help companies perform better.

A highly specialized group of engineers and designers from Altair worked along with Ferraris engineering, design and manufacturing professionals on-site at the Italian brand’s Vehicle’s development center in Italy to develop and refine the Next Generation platform.

Speaking about the platform, Maximilian Szwaj, Ferrari’s Director of Innovation and BIW Development said that Altair provided Ferrari with both the CAD and CAE expertise needed to facilitate tight integration, especially in view of the fast developments in the manufacturing and packaging processes. The optimizations processes deployed by the Altair team helped to control the weight without any compromise in the rigorous structural targets while incorporating new packaging changes. For Ferrari, the Next Generation platform will mark a significant engineering achievement and showcases the brand’s successful collaboration with Altair.

Ferrari is noted for its focus on innovation when it comes to the development of new vehicles and this is where the innovative design optimization methods employed by the Altair team like its Concept Optimization Driven Process C123 came into play. Outstanding performance is a watchword at Ferrari and the Next Generation platform, in keeping with this theme is 15% lighter, while boosting NVH, crash and other critical attributes by over 20%. Altair’s solver and optimization technologies, RADIOSS and OptiStruct for crash and NVH respectively were used as key tools for achieving the outstanding weight and performance characteristics.

Dr Royston Jones, Exec VP European Operations & Global CTO, Altair ProductDesign said that the measure of trust Ferrari revealed by using Altair as a strategic partner for the development of the Next Generation platform was a great compliment. Ferrari provided the Altair team with an Innovation Environment where, they worked hand in hand with Ferrari’s engineering team, and had complete freedom to apply new technologies.

He added, “As an innovation strategy, Ferrari encourages ideas from everywhere and our new design processes were able to rapidly assess the majority of ideas.” He said that the Next Generation architecture has an organic nature, with a smooth structure from sections to joints, as an outcome of heavy use of structural optimization with optimum material layout for significantly enhancing weight / performance characteristics. True to its name Next Generation, it is indeed futuristic and will portend a new era in vehicle technology.