Tire maker Michelin develops FEA post-processing tools using MeshViz XLM and Open Inventor® by VSG

Burlington: Michelin inventiveness in motion : cars‚ two-wheel vehicles‚ trucks‚ construction machinery‚ tractors‚ aircraft… Michelin provides innovative solutions for the different operating conditions corresponding to each vehicle. To make this challenge a reality, they develop dedicated tire analysis software solutions. These solutions need to be very interactive and the visualization of 3D nonlinear data must be accurate to validate design solutions.

Nowadays‚ 3D visualization is essential to validate design solutions at all simulation stages‚ from initial feasibility studies to production control.

Michelin Finite Element Analysis (FEA) post-processing tools have been developed using the Open Inventor® by VSG library. It provides unique advantages such as:
• Availability of advanced modules‚ e.g. MeshViz XLM
• Heterogeneous platform compatibility (Unix, Linux, Windows)
• C++ API
• Top quality support team and training program

Open Inventor technology is fully integrated in Michelin simulation software. It offers sophisticated visualization capabilities for in-depth post-processing and exploration of nonlinear simulation results.

Data are recovered from the FEA solver result database and displayed by selecting a region of interest in the tire, either in 3D or 2D space.

Open Inventor allows great flexibility in the visual representation. For example: clipping along any 3D plane, flexible slicing, wireframe display, iso-lines, iso-surfaces, transparency and stereoscopic views. In order to handle the increasing size of data volumes (e.g. full 3D computations with all surrounding objects)‚ Michelin needs more and more high-performance tools such as VSG’s new module MeshViz XLM, which completely lives up to their in-house customers’ expectations. In particular‚ MeshViz XLM can directly access application data structures, avoiding time and memory wasting copying of data, and directly supports parametric nonlinear mesh cells.