Triumph Seattle beats competition with automated stress, flow and motion analysis

Aircraft actuator and hydraulic systems builder Triumph Aerospace Systems-Seattle says it is winning contracts by providing automatically-generated detailed performance specifications with its designs. The company works with major aircraft-builders like Boeing and Airbus, and top-tier suppliers Saab and Messier-Bugatti. It says it’s getting a competitive edge by using Cosmos CAE software from SolidWorks on contract proposals for landing gear parts, actuators, valves, electric brake components, and cargo door hydraulics. Apart from price/performance and ease of use, Triumph-Seattle says it close the Cosmos suite because of its integration with SolidWorks 3D CAD. Cosmos templates and wizards enable its engineers to accurately analyse designs to anticipate and correct flaws before proposals go to customers. In fact, it says Cosmos software now helps from inception to completion of the design process. The firm states that engineers at different phases of the design cycle use: CosmosFloWorks to size internal parts and passages in valves to minimise weight and pressure drop; CosmosMotion to detect spool impact loads that impede the valve’s operation and mechanism kinematic analysis; and CosmosWorks to optimise the finite element design to reduce weight. “The Cosmos applications are much better than the tools we were using before,” says Triumph-Seattle engineer Daniel Nordeen. “Cosmos is not labour intensive. Many tasks are automated, so the engineers don’t have to spend a lot of time setting up the analysis before they can run it. “That ultimately helps us submit stronger proposals to our customers. We’re including at least 50% more preliminary stress and analysis information in our proposals than we did previously. Our customers don’t just want to see a design; they want some assurance that the design is going to work.” Triumph Aerospace Systems-Seattle’s designs are manufactured by one of parent company Triumph Group’s 43 manufacturing sites, or by outside manufacturers who meet the company’s design requirements. Among the company’s most significant recent projects were landing gear valves for the Airbus A400M, 747 Large Cargo Freighter ‘swingtail,’ and the cargo door actuation system for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.