SolidWorks Simulation helps world-class sports car manufacturers improve

Different brands of cars represent different values, such as efficiency, luxury, speed and performance.

Donkervoort Automobielen BV is a Dutch-made car dealer, SolidWorks' advanced 3D design and simulation verification tool, which plays an important role in the pursuit of the perfect sports car.

By adding SolidWorks Flow Simulation and SolidWorks Simulation Premium to Donkervoort's existing SolidWorks solutions, the company successfully created a single CAD environment to redesign the classic D8GTO, ensuring complete integration of the design and verification process.

Donkervoort is focused on creating a sports car that is handmade, lightweight and has the same high performance as an F1 car. To reinforce the power, Donkervoort redesigned the D8GTO engine, which increased the overall weight and had to reshape the body. To this end, the company turned to SolidWorks' 3D fluid dynamics and structural analysis solutions to ensure that while maintaining high levels of performance, costs can be kept within budget and delivered on time.

In the redesign process, Donkervoort broke through several different challenges, including optimizing the intake manifold and engine intake flow as well as open-wheel aerodynamics. In order to reduce the weight of the car body while increasing the strength, but still can withstand the rigidity, impact and impact force during the simulation test, the company chose to build a high-strength steel pipe frame made of carbon fiber material. At the same time, the design team also installed wings on the rear fender to increase downforce and drag.

Donkervoort's ability to create creativity and problem-solving in the redesign of its classic sports car is exactly what SolidWorks is designed to help engineers achieve, the core capabilities of Dassault SolidWorks, Simulation product manager Stephen Endersby. By simulating its design challenges, Donkervoort's design team succeeded in avoiding time-consuming and costly steps on the road to the best products, and the results were self-evident. With SolidWorks Simulation, Donkervoort was able to reduce the number of required proofs by 50 percent, the product to become more sophisticated, the aerodynamics and performance side to be fully enhanced, and to apply structural innovation to sports car design.

“The reason we chose SolidWorks Simulation was that it met all of our simulation analysis needs,” said Jordi Wiersma, director of engineering design at Donkervoort. “CAD integration is inevitable and necessary. We have worked with consultants who use other analysis tools externally. We have found that we spend more time integrating consultants' analysis results into our own CAD systems than we will analyze. The results are applied to our own design.

Working in a single CAD environment allows us to use simulation tools more efficiently, and to apply these simulation results directly to our design concepts while designing.