VPS/DRY

• The base coat (electro-coat) is the prime corrosion protection for a car body. Full curing without thermal destruction of the coat is needed to protect the body-in-white against early corrosion. The temperature history at every point of the structure needs to be controlled. This is not always easy but can be simulated by VPS/DRY to assess possible changes in design and/or process.
• Top coat or clear coat is a very difficult material since the viscosity is another metric for good paint quality. If the viscosity is too high, orange skin might occur. If the viscosity is too low, runners might occur. Also the setting degree of those coats controls the strength of the material. Viscosity and setting degree can be simulated using VPS/DRY.
• Modern multi-material car bodies (steel, aluminium, magnesium, polymers, etc) develop large thermal stresses (i.e. in the EDC-oven). To judge the pre-stress levels in the oven is a very important criterion. A thermal-mechanical interaction version of VPS will be made available next year.
• Curing of adhesives, relaxation of stresses from forming processes, bake hardening of aluminium in the oven are another areas of interest which can be answered using VPS/DRY.
• VPS/DRY can be used early in design to judge the "manufacturability" for a new design. Late changes can be avoided. BMW is already using VPS/DRY for every new car in development.
• VPS/DRY can be used to speed up the cycle times for the manufacturing process. This reduces the cost for painting on each car.
• VPS/DRY can be used for designing new equipment. BMW has saved about 5 million EUR for the investment in a new oven because a minor change in the existing one was sufficient for a new car.

VPS/EDC

• We see a tendency towards car bodies with small and more complex cavities (i.e. for stiffness reasons). The thickness of the electro coat, in particular, is an important issue for lacquer quality and corrosion protection, and can be simulated using VPS/EDC. CAD-FEM, the developers of VPS, has worked on car bodies where it is impossible to estimate the thickness in the cavities without a simulation tool.
• The cycle time of the process can also be reduced using VPS/EDC.
• Shape and location of anodes can be optimised using VPS/EDC to improve the process.

VPS/DIP

• Bubble inclusions may occur when body is immersed in liquids for cleaning, etc. These prevent complete wetting of surfaces. Leading to unclean surfaces or no electro-coating. Having multiple open cavities makes the estimation of possible air bubbles difficult without a simulation tool.
• Any fluid remaining in the car body after removing from a basin contaminates the following basin or must be removed by a manual process (very costly).
• VPS/DIP can simulate these phenomena in the virtual stage.
• Modern conveying systems for electro-coating or other basin processes support more flexible and controllable movements of the car body. This, however, needs reasonable guidelines for the conveying process. Using VPS/DIP one can develop these.

VPS/CP

• Simulation of deposition and flow of wax sprayed onto the inner surface of a cavity for sealing purposes and corrosion protection. This module is embedded in the CAD-System CATIA V5 to support the nozzle designer to virtually assess the performance of a nozzle design.
• Modeling and Solution is a batch process and does not require much user interaction but the input of the process parameters.
• The results can be viewed as animated thickness distribution on the surface of the cavity within CATIA v5. For implementation of VPS/CP in your environment the assessment of customer specific parameters for the wax material is mandatory.

CATIA-Toolkit