Altair and LG Electronics Slash Smartphone Drop-Test Simulation Time

Altair has developed a way to accelerate the development of new consumer electronics by speeding drop-test simulation times.

Altair and Korea's LG Electronics (LGE) have created a seamlessly integrated drop-test simulation automation system which enables LGE engineers to conduct smartphone drop-test simulations within 24 hours, what the company says is a significant improvement over the normal one to two weeks required for this procedure.

Employing Altair's HyperWorks suite and its embedded automation framework, the Altair-LGE team automated many of the manual tasks associated with FEA modeling , analysis set up and post-processing to carry out the drop-test simulation.

"Altair and LGE's collaboration on this drop-test simulation automation system helps LGE to be even more competitive and bring a greater variety of robust products to market faster," said Molly Heskitt, Altair's senior director of global electronics and consumer goods. "This automation system addresses major challenges of the electronics industry: time to market, innovation and cost. It shortens product development time, lowers development and warranty cost and leaves more time for design, all resulting in a better phone."

LGE has adopted the drop-test simulation automation system for ongoing smartphone designs, and plans to use it on its all future smartphones, also employing Altair's OptiStruct tool to optimize the designs of the phones for cost and reliability.

"One of the biggest challenges to the smartphone industry is time to market," said Y.H Lee, research fellow, LGE, "and many companies do not have enough time in the highly competitive product development cycle to consider as many designs as they would like to. The standard 7 to 14 days for drop-test simulation is too long. With Altair we are now able to slice the time required for drop-test simulation from a week to just hours."

Altair anticipates that this automated drop-test simulation process can produce similar results for the design of other types of consumer electronics.

For more information, visit Altair and LG Electronics.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.