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Smarts and Software Solve Challenges on
the Road
Company
ACO Technologies |
Industry
Civil Engineering |
Location
U.K. |
Product Used
COSMOSWorks™
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Type of Analysis
Linear Static
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More Details
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The ACO KerbDrain lets water flow
through the holes in the curbstone and channel
it down the center, essentially using the curb
itself as the drain.
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The Challenge
ACO Drain, a division of ACO Technologies PLC, in Shefford, Bedfordshire,
UK, is helping to improve drainage installation and performance
with products such as roadway drains, grates, and manhole covers,
using advanced materials and design techniques that improve installation
and performance. The company's engineers developed a new product,
called the ACO KerbDrain, that lets water flow through holes in
the curbstone and channel it down the center, essentially using
the curb itself as the drain.
ACO Drain faced several obstacles
in developing the KerbDrain. It had to learn the ins and outs
of a new market, highway design and maintenance, and develop new
production techniques to cast the product in a single pour and
color it during the process.
The Solution
ACO Drain chose COSMOSWorks software for finite element analysis.
COSMOSWorks helped the designers understand exactly where KerbDrain
might fail under certain load conditions. Identifying the failure
points would have been difficult in a physical test, because prototypes
can collapse without warning. The computer model provided a more
realistic picture of the loads the KerbDrain could withstand.
COSMOSWorks also showed the nature of potential failures. The
designers tried different what-if scenarios and optimized the
results.
The KerbDrain has been extremely successful
for ACO Drain. Local authorities are enthusiastic about it, with
one Blackpool official calling it "a positive drainage solution
which is highly cost-effective for us." KerbDrain has also
won broader recognition for its innovative design; in 2001 it
received the prestigious Queens Award for Enterprise: Innovation,
and the United Kingdom Design Council awarded the company its
Millennium status.
All these accolades attest to the
power of smart thinking, smart design, and smart software.
Summary and Metrics:
- Reduced prototypes from 2-3 to just 1
- Reduced prototype testing from 8 weeks to 1 day
- Estimated savings of over $45,000 in prototype tooling costs
alone
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In
the end, the decision came down to accuracy. "[The
other products] wouldn't give us an accurate result. They
were, in fact, pretty inaccurate in our application."
Rob King, Research and Development Manager
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