ESI and JSP offer ARPRO® Electronic Data Sheets for PAM-COMFORT
19 七月 2011
Paris, France
The comfort simulation component of ESI’s virtual seat prototyping integrated solution
ESI Group pioneer and world-leading solution provider in virtual prototyping, announces a collaborative project with the North American division of JSP, a leading provider of strong and lightweight expanded polymers. The physical properties of ARPRO® Expanded Polypropylene, one of JSP’s high-end sustainable foam products, will be included into PAM-COMFORT’s library in order to streamline engineering development processes.
Using a digital mock-up of a seat, PAM-COMFORT predicts detailed information related to Seat Design – including possible cosmetic defects due to manufacturing process and seat performances in terms of occupant posture and sitting comfort - taking into account the complex physics of materials, the detailed interactions between all components of the seat, and the time-dependency of materials as an occupant settles in their seat. The physical parameters resulting from each stage of the chain of manufacturing and assembly processes (for instance, residual stresses after manufacturing) are used as an input to the following one (for instance, occupant sitting) in order to ensure a high level of precision, whatever the seat design and the anthropometry of the occupant.
A high performance material, ARPRO® offers unique combined properties to manufacturers and seat development engineers alike: high strength-to-weight ratio, light weight, chemical inertia, thermal insulation, energy absorption, acoustical properties and 100% recyclability. These technical properties make it the perfect material to cover many diverse applications, particularly in seat manufacturing for the transportation industries. ARPRO® is quickly becoming a standard in the field of new seat development.
With this joint effort between ESI and JSP, the integration of ARPRO®’s exceptional properties into the PAM-COMFORT library will provide a simple and direct way to conveniently evaluate the benefit brought by ARPRO® to new seat design. The database provides the data preformatted for immediate use in PAM-COMFORT. This removes a barrier to innovative design considerations, which are typically impeded by the need to physically test for the intrinsic properties of materials.
This intelligent partnership will allow the simulation of ARPRO®’s unique product properties via a rich, digitally enhanced library - using advanced encryption techniques - without sharing any of ARPRO®’s innovative and protected IP. The initiative represents a break-through in the way PAM-COMFORT users, mostly automotive engineers, will be able to use specific
brands of innovative materials for virtual prototyping. From the early stage of a seat’s conception, Virtual Prototyping enables reduction of R&D costs and acceleration of new seat development processes. The success of this initiative suggests possible expansion of the PAM-COMFORT library using other customers’ innovative materials to maximize the capacities of end-to-end product prototyping.
“JSP hopes this new partnership will serve the company’s mission to delight its customers with innovative products and technologies, and to establish continuously higher benchmarks of customer service. Plugging ARPRO®’s properties into PAM-COMFORT will ultimately benefit our customers’ R&D teams and contribute to our mutual success,” said Kipp Boegner, Engineering Manager at JSP in Detroit.