Significantly reducing time and cost associated with traditional wind tunnel testing

About the customer

The Doppelmayr Group is an international manufacturer of ropeways and innovative transportation systems for ski areas, urban transport, amusement parks and material handling systems. Today, more than 3,300 employees in 50 countries around the world plan, develop, design, manufacture, build and support innovative projects, including high-performance ropeways for passenger and material transport, efficient intralogistics systems and creative experience concepts. From ropeway pioneer to a world market leader, the company’s history is characterized by its visionary spirit, courage and experience. To realize product innovation, Doppelmayr deploys Siemens’ state-of-the-art-solutions.

Their challenge

Ski resorts situated in mountainous, high-altitude regions often face challenging weather conditions characterized by strong and gusty winds. For this reason, it’s necessary to conduct a thorough assessment of the wind forces exerted on ski resort transport systems. Typically, wind tunnel tests are carried out to study the aerodynamic behavior of a transport device, which is key to ensuring its performance and passenger safety.

But these wind tunnel tests are complex, expensive and time-consuming. The manufacturer needed conclusive simulation results that would enable them to accurately calculate the generated drag, conduct a comprehensive analysis of the flow field surrounding the lift’s structure, and compare the aerodynamic performance of various configurations across different operating conditions. The Doppelmayr engineers, who have experience using and deploying Siemens’ technology, turned to Simcenter™ software, part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services, to provide a solution.

Using Simcenter Ultrafluid, the engineers examined the aerodynamic behavior of the chairlifts in headwind and sidewind conditions.

Our solution

Siemens and Doppelmayr collaborated on a study using Simcenter Ultrafluid™ software – part of the Simcenter design and simulation platform – that is designed to study external aerodynamics and turbulent flows around complex geometries. This study involved several simulations across different chair models to investigate the impact of two main factors: the position of the protective canopy (both fully extended and closed) and the deflection angle of the chairlift from the applied loads. The study also examined the chairlift’s aerodynamic behavior in headwind and sidewind conditions. Simcenter Ultrafluid, powered by a highly efficient implementation of the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) and 100 percent graphical processor unit (GPU) acceleration, enabled comprehensive and rapid overnight simulations on a single server. This blend of speed, automation and thoroughness was crucial, as was the software’s capabilities for handling large-scale, high-precision volume meshes with minimal user input. This streamlined approach to model preparation – requiring less manual intervention for computer-aided design (CAD) file preparation while retaining detailed and complex characteristics of the initial geometry – sets Simcenter Ultrafluid apart from conventional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods.

The study involved simulations across different chair models to investigate the impact of the position of the protective canopy (both fully extended and closed).

Results

The simulations conducted using Simcenter Ultrafluid proved highly successful, showing a strong correlation with existing wind tunnel data. In benchmark cases, the simulation drag values – critical for understanding airflow and resistance – matched experimental data with an impressive accuracy deviation of less than 5 percent. This high degree of accuracy signifies a major advancement, as it implies a substantial reduction in time and cost associated with traditional wind tunnel testing. Additionally, the Simcenter Ultrafluid advanced postprocessing capabilities allow for a more detailed analysis of the aerodynamic behavior of chair models, surpassing what is currently not attainable through experimental methods.