Dassault Systemes and Apollo Tyres join hands to seek outstanding growth Dassault Systemes, a US $ 1.5 billion company and Apollo Tyres a US $ 1 billion company have come together to seek strong growth and to rise beyond the boundaries of ordinary. Apollo Tyres has under its wings a wide range of product portfolio that includes commercial vehicle tyres, passenger car tyres, sports utility and specialized off-road tyres.

Dassault at the other end has a product range comprising of CATIA, Simulia, Enovia & Delmia. CATIA is the flagship offering of the company which according to Shantanu Gupta, marketing manager – India, DS has one lakh customers across 40 countries and an estimated 1 million users. Shantanu adds, “Our solutions are used for concept, planning, simulating, synthesis, digital manufacturing and much more”




Apollo Tyres is using Dassault’s Simulia (ABAQUS) solution at its R&D centre located deep inside their Limbda facility near Vadodara. “This plant is the biggest production facility of Apollo, and houses the sole R&D centre of the company”, states Satish Agarwal, Unit Head, Limbda, Apollo Tyres.

ABAQUS is in use at Apollo Tyres for the last two and half years. It is finding extensive application in various product development categories like ultra high performance and high performance passenger car radials, truck and bus radials, low profile tubeless truck radials and more with lean development cycle and enhanced product performance characteristics. Every new product is passed through FEA simulation to evaluate alternate ideas, to guide the design and refine the concept in the initial stages of development. “ABAQUS simulation helps with design and performance requirements”, says M.K Jain, head – corporate technology at Apollo. He adds further: Virtual prototyping reduces design cycle time and cost, helps optimization of product and elevates the design properties. ABAQUS CAE is user-friendly and we have chosen ABAQUS because it is a world class product and has specific functionalities for tyre analysis. It is also fast and accurate.

A tyre is 80-88 percent rubber, 5 percent fabric and rest steel, remarks P.K Mohamed, Chief R&D, Apollo Tyres, “and ABAQUS helps to optimize mold direction”. As he indicates the use of Simulia not only presents Apollo with the advantage of technical competency over competition, it also helps the tyre maker in key areas of performance like tyre durability, rolling resistance, tread wear, force and movements and NVH.

Unlike other products, tyre simulation poses challenges of various kinds of non-linearity including material, deformation and contact. “Complexities of tyre include complex cross sections, composite materials, compressed polyester or steel reinforcing chords, Steel beads and rubber not to mention the complex loading conditions. The tyre is mathematically very complex”, states Renuka Sreenivasan, general manager, Simulia. Tyre development poses a unique combination of challenges.

Rubber and Tyre chords are non-linear materials with temperature and strain rate dependency, and also have different stiffness in different modes of deformation like tension and compression. The tyre chord, which is a load carrying member is laid at an angle and presents complex anisotropic behavior. In addition to this the reinforcement chords change their orientation during the loading. All of which contributes to the complexity of tyre analysis. “Without such a simulation tool it takes a lot of time to develop the right tyre. With this software we can reach very close to the target”, describes Mohamed

With an impressive list of customers by its side, Apollo has steady eyes on Europe to be the market to be in to get global. While Mohamed proudly describes that Europe is where Apollo wants to be and amongst the top, Jain describes the movement, which also includes the coming together of Apollo and Dassault to seek high growth, as a quest for a product basket that should include everything – including products like run flat. “There is a very big challenge lying there. We are starving towards changing mindsets by going beyond the fine lines”, is how Jain sums up the journey ahead.

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