SOFTWARE INSPEX & SIMULATION WORDS: Sam Davies
P
iling suitcases, laptops and sample parts into the back of a van. Progressing from microscopically small plankton organisms to bionic lightweight construction. ELISE GmbH, embarking on an eight-hour road trip in November 2019 from Bremerhaven to Frankfurt, having previously spent ten years inside The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, is in the mood to talk about its journey. The company’s origins are in the research of single-cell plankton organisms called diatoms which need to float to get maximum intake via photosynthesis and require a permeable structure to take in nutrients. Over the years, Daniel Seigel, Sebastian Möller and Dr Moritz Maier, the eventual co-founders of ELISE, would study plankton organisms, seeking to harness the lightweight construction principles of these microscopic entities and apply them in the fields of automotive, aerospace and more. ELISE (Evolutionary Light Structure Engineering) started as a design service, with the co-founders deciding to pursue commercialisation in 2018 after positive feedback from clients. A six-month beta phase then attracted some of Germany’s most renowned manufacturers, each of which extended their usage of the software while more early access customers came on board too. Weeks before Formnext 2019, where the start-up was showcasing applications from
SOFTWARE & SIMULATION FEATURE sponsored by
Premium Aerotec, Volkswagen and Brose, ELISE had joined the likes of Carbon, Desktop Metal and Xometry in being backed by BMW i Ventures. A sum of 3 million EUR was raised in the seed funding round led by the automotive giant’s venture capital arm after the Group’s Motorsport division had successfully deployed the ELISE platform during the beta programme.
MAKING HEADWAY
The software that has caused such a stir as to result in BMW’s backing at this early stage combines generative design capabilities with process automation to create a single platform that houses tools for topology optimisation, stress analysis, fatigue analysis and more.
ELISE calls it ‘Generative Engineering’. “Let’s try to imagine a world where all the necessary steps and people needed for such a huge production are in one place and if you change something in the design you would instantly know the costs of the production, the weight, the simulation resolves, the displacement, the energy absorption; it’s all in one place and instantly available. This is the vision we have in mind,” Maier tells TCT. It’s a vision, so far at least, enjoyed by the likes of Volkswagen Osnabrück GmbH and Premium Aerotec, whose applications of the technology were presented at Formnext. The VW component on show is an A-pillar inlay manufactured with Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology. It boasts a reduction in weight of 74% and a reduction in the number of parts by 67%. Premium Aerotec’s application, meanwhile, is an auxiliary stabilising4
“IT’S A COMPLETELY NEW WAY OF THINKING.”
SHOWN:
ROCKET BRACKET DESIGNED BY ARIANE GROUP USING ELISE
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