West Virginia University Uses SIMULIA for Inflatable Tunnel Plug Development
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Abaqus Unified Finite Element Analysis
- SIMULIA
Tech Stack
- Finite Element Analysis
- Computer Aided Engineering
Implementation Scale
- Pilot projects
Impact Metrics
- Innovation Output
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
Applicable Industries
- National Security & Defense
- Transportation
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Digital Twin
- Infrastructure Inspection
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
West Virginia University (WVU) is a public, land-grant, research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses include those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley and Potomac State College of West Virginia University in Keyser; and a second clinical campus for the university's medical and dental schools at Charleston Area Medical Center in Charleston. WVU is organized into 14 colleges and schools offering 350 majors within 184 bachelor's, 109 master's, 66 doctoral, and two professional degree programs. WVU has produced 24 Rhodes Scholars, including former WVU president David C. Hardesty, Jr. The University also has produced 36 Goldwater Scholars, 22 Truman Scholars, and five members of USA Today's "All‑USA College Academic First Team."
The Challenge
West Virginia University (WVU) was tasked by U.S. Homeland Security to develop large inflatable plugs for use in emergency situations requiring the closing of vehicular tunnels or other large cylindrical structures. The challenge was that refining prototypes in a test facility was complex and time-intensive. The need for such a plug was driven by incidents such as the flooding of New York City’s subways during Hurricane Sandy, a truck fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel, and the release of sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system. The idea was to set up inflatable structures, either permanently or temporarily, in multiple locations where an emergency was anticipated.
The Solution
WVU employed Abaqus Unified Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and CAE solutions from Dassault Systèmes’ SIMULIA to create realistic simulations of inflatable plug components and models of global plug behavior inside full-size tunnels. The simulations included folding, positioning, settling (from gravity), deploying, and inflating the plug, as well as the plug’s conformance to a tunnel and its adjustment against other objects typically found within a tunnel. The team’s Abaqus models covered a variety of components, the main ones being the inflatable plug and a tunnel segment. The WVU engineers based their simulations on the Uniform Pressure Method (UPM) because it is simple, computationally efficient, and adequate for modeling relatively slow inflation.
Operational Impact
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