Design & development services
Dedicated multi-disciplinary engineering service delivering innovative, robust and functional designs.
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End-to-end powertrain design & development services
Hexagons powertrain engineering services team, known as Applied Solution Group, comprised of experienced mechanical, electrical and electronic engineers address the biggest industrial pain points in powertrain and electro-mechanical system development for over 30 years. We offer the capability to deliver turnkey design solutions from concept through to production, and we can also support client needs in developing existing products at each stage within the development lifecycle. Services delivered to customers range from trouble shooting wind turbine bearing issues to optimising the cooling of aerospace drivetrains to the turn-key design and development of integrated electric drive units.
The team’s core expertise is in drivetrain design and development, be it gearboxes, electric powertrains, power electronics, actuation and control. This expertise is realised in a number of industry applications including Aerospace, Automotive, Energy, Marine, Heavy Machinery and Rail.
Video showcase of a Hexagon designed 3-in-1 ePropulsion System for eVTOL and Distributed Electric propulsion applications.
Overview
Transmissions and actuators are the fundamental mechanical system that allow engineers to control the magnitude and directionality of forces and apply them to a specific useful purpose like driving the wheels of a car or controlling the angle of an aileron. The Applied Solutions Group have experience of delivering turnkey drivetrain designs, or supporting customer at all stages of the product development and providing knowledge transfer when requested to help customers develop in-house skills. We have extensive experience in delivering single- and multi-speed transmission solution and shift actuation systems, with a range of technology solutions including electro-hydraulic, pneumatic and full-electric - depending on client requirements, shift quality targets, vehicle/platform application and market segment requirements. Lubrication is also a key area of our expertise when developing transmission systems, critical to the performance, reliability and lifetime of the product. We have the expert knowledge and tools to analyse, design and deliver most types of lubrication systems. Applied Solutions is not only experienced in shift actuation system development but also have experience designing and developing actuators for control surface and blade pitch control applications.
Typical systems
- Drivetrains
- Manual transmission (MT)
- Automated Manual Transmission (AMT)
- Automatic Transmission (AT)
- Dual Clutch Transmission (DCT)
- Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT)
- Gas Turbine Accessory Drivetrain
- Geared Turbofan Gearbox
- Rotorcraft Drivetrain
- Power-Take off unit (PTO)
- Actuators
- Shift Actuators
- Park Locks
- Control Surface Actuators
- Blade Pitch Actuators
- Wind Turbine Yaw Control Actuators
Typical activities
- Gear Sizing
- Layout Selection
- Detailed Design
- FEA Analysis and structural optimisation
- Lubrication & Cooling System Design
- Analytical & CFD Analysis Efficiency, thermal optimisation
- NVH Analysis & Optimisation
- Design for Manufacturability, GD&T, Production of manufacturing drawings
Overview
Electrical machines are at the heart of any electromechanical system as they directly connect the electrical and mechanical sub-systems. The Applied Solutions Group team includes experienced electrical and electronic engineers who have led and supported the design and development of electrical machines for traction and power generation applications and ranging from low kilowatt to multi-megawatt powers. We have experience with analysing motors electromagnetic, dynamic, thermal and structural performance and working with a range of motor technologies, including internal permanent magnet, surface permanent magnet, brushless direct current, synchronous reluctance, induction and non-rare earth.
Typical Systems
- Internal Permanent Magnet (IPM)
- Surface Permanent Magnet (SPM)
- Axial Flux Machine (AFM)
- Induction Machines (IM)
- Synchronous Reluctance Machine (SynRM)
- Switched Reluctance Machine (SRM)
- Wound Field Synchronous Machine (WFSM)
- Brushless Direct Current (BLDC)
Typical Activities
- Topology selection and duty cycle matching
- Electromagnetic design and analysis
- Modelling of high-speed dynamics
- Thermal design & analysis
- Cooling concept development & design
- Structural Design & packaging
- Dynamic Analysis of isolated and mechanically integrated system
Overview
Power Electronic systems transform and convert electrical power into the voltages and currents required for an application: driving a motor, charging a battery, transferring long distances. The Applied Solutions Group team also develops Power Electronics solutions which are closely coupled to our E-Machine design processes to ensure a balanced and optimised powertrain design solution, and one that is of high performance and efficiency. We are able to support customers in either selecting appropriate off-the-shelf inverters for their powertrain, or design bespoke and highly integrated solutions with custom motor control algorithms. We have developed detailed design processes for integrated motor-inverter design that can help save cost, improve efficiency, and reduce packaging size and mass. We have also developed several in-house tools for component sizing and loss calculation that can speed up the initial design and inverter/component selection process with higher confidence of system performance during early lifecycle stages.
We have knowledge of working with the latest wide-bandgap semiconductor devices including Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN). Furthermore, we have experience in using state of the art motor control algorithms to provide the best performance with the hardware available. We can also support testing and validation of inverter designs using electronic loads or on dynamometer test rigs.
Typical Systems
- DC-AC Inverters
- AC-DC Rectifiers
- DC-DC Converters
- AC-AC Converters
- BLDC drivers
Typical Activities
- Inverter selection and powertrain matching:
- Commercial off-the-shelf product support or bespoke hardware design
- Silicon (Si) V Silicon carbide (SiC) V Gallium Nitride (GaN)
- Fast charging and bi-directional applications for vehicle-to-grid
- Safety concept design
- Electrical distribution busbar and wiring harness design
- Communication and calibration
- Motor controllability modelling
- Integrated housing designs considering hardware assembly and manufacturability
- Thermal Analysis and cooling system design
Overview
To have a functioning electro-mechanical system does not just require the application of Power, but also its Control. The Applied Solutions Group team offers instrumentation and control system design, which can be closely coupled and integrated with Power Electronic subsystems as and if required depending on the application and client's needs. We offer full system design capability from control system modelling, sensor and actuator selection and design, analogue and digital circuit design, component selection, layout and routing, manufacturing and integration. We have in depth knowledge and experience in the application of electronics technology, programmable electronic microarchitectures (including microcontrollers, microprocessors and FPGAs), embedded system development and verification testing. Depending on client needs, we are able to offer technology demonstrator solutions, which may include Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware or rapid prototyping of bespoke hardware, all the way through to medium scale production of representative in-service electronics hardware (and software), including to Functional Safety standards. We have a pedigree of success in delivering electronic control units for many clients, including automotive Transmission Control Units, Aerospace actuation control systems, through to the Energy Sector for Equipment Health Monitoring solutions.
Typical Systems
- Transmission Control Unit (TCU)
- Motor Control Unit (MCU)
- Battery Management Systems (BMS)
- Belt-Starter Generator Control Unit (BSG)
Typical Activities
- Architecture Definition: System, Unit and Board-level/PCB
- Multi domain/sector – industrial to embedded
- Multi-function, multi-purpose domain hardware units or standalone single-purpose hardware units
- Functional Safety compliant and cyber threat resilient
- Plant modelling industry standard software tools
- Application code development compliant with industry standards, e.g. ISO26262
- Powertrain and Hybrid Supervisory controls
- MIL/SIL/HIL Testing
Overview
The objective of system integration is to ensure that all system’s components can be successfully combined into their associated Subsystems and subsequently integrated into a working System which can be demonstrated to meet its requirements. Due to the complexity of the electro-mechanical systems, such as ePowertrains, and interactions between various components, a whole system approach has to be followed to ensure the system performs to expectations. Our Design Services team offers turnkey design solutions for ePowertrains and electro-mechanical actuation systems from concept through to production. We have experience in full system dynamic analysis of transmission, motor and other ancillaries’ to check the responses from the interactions of all the electro-mechanical components. In addition to the system integration requirements of an electro-mechanical system we also have experience integrating into larger systems or vehicles and designing for effective integration with vehicle cooling, structural and electrical elements.
Typical Activities
- ePowertrain packaging
- Sub-system integration and interface management
- Electro-mechanical vehicle integration with Chassis, Cooling and Electrical Distribution systems
- Software and controls architecture and integration
Overview
We are able to offer full 'turnkey' product solutions from requirements capture through System Architecting, Concept Design, Detailed Design, Manufacturing and Integration, Testing, Verification and Validation to final product delivery. The scope of these projects can range from a wind turbine gearbox, a control surface actuator for aerospace or an electrical machine for a automotive application to complex integrated systems such as 3-in-1 multispeed ePowertrain with integrated inverter, motor and transmission in a single package. Our turnkey projects often are part of a larger customer development programme and we have extensive experience in working with our customers to ensure that all stakeholders are included as necessary and delivery milestones are met. Choosing us as your partner in a turnkey design project you can be confident we will deliver a reliable, efficient, lightweight and cost-effective product with full knowledge and design IP transfer to the customer to ensure the maximum value is realised.
Overview
When you have an initial requirements for your product, but need to understand the specific design that is best for your application. Our Design Services team can deliver architectural design services for rotating machinery and electro-mechanical systems, developing different concept solutions and assessing which candidate is the best suited solution for the application and then progressing this design through the initial stages of product development to determine all of its fundamental characteristics. This can be carried through to Detailed Design, Prototyping and Test as part of a full Turnkey Development Project.
Our processes and methods enables the rapid yet optimised down-selection to deliver a 'many-to-one' concept, providing the optimised trade-off between customer requirements and technical constraints which apply. This process is proven with success, in particular for the Automotive industry, whereby systems typically have challenging requirements and a high number of available permutations and combinations of technology and implementation. We are able to effectively benchmark the market performance vs client needs and optimise the design solution within the technical and cost constraints which apply. Our integrated multi-fidelity modelling capability enables this rapid design development and performance review in order to achieve effective and robust system solution down-selection, leading to the best concept design trade-offs in order to deliver clients wants and needs.
Overview
The ultimate aim of all development projects is to bring a product to market, but in order to bring said product to market it must be taken from a concept through to a realised manufacturable design. This can be the most difficult part of any development and requires the system to be thoroughly analysed to inform design decisions. We have a full multi-physics, multi-domain modelling capability ranging from system level modelling down to detailed component simulation, including parametric modelling to rapidly aid the development of the optimised whole-system solution. We apply different types of models for each layer within the V-Lifecycle to fulfil the requirements to the level of fidelity and design confidence and integrity required, de-risking the solution and improving the maturity using data-driven design decisions, whilst providing full traceability within the design process back to requirements. We have experience working collaboratively with customers to deliver detailed design activities alongside the customers own engineering team or taking full responsibility for all detailed design activities. In addition, most detailed design projects require the creation of manufacturing drawings to ISO8888 or regional/company standards. The manufacturing drawing remains the most important engineering document, becoming the binding contract between the designer and manufacture. Drawings contains all of the detailed information for the end product alongside all of the supporting documentation: Assembly manuals, Design Documentation for Certification, Test Specification, Operation & Maintenance Manual, etc.
Overview
Customers often approach us with an existing design which they are experiencing in-service problem, such as high NVH, or desire a performance improvement from, such as improved efficiency or thermal performance. We are able to reverse engineer a customers existing design solution in order to understand and decompose which components are the contributors to any in-service issue and therefore advise and provide design solutions to remedy the problem. Using the existing design data we are able to use computer aided engineering techniques and our extensive experience to determine within the constraints of the existing designs interfaces and manufacturing how to deliver the optimum improvements. Design optimisation projects can be small design projects in themselves where entirely new subsystems are designed as part of the activity, such as designing a new cooling system around a customers existing motor design.
We have a strong breadth and depth of knowledge in delivering high performance product solutions which do not compromise on reliability, improving system tolerance to external environmental factors such as thermal excursions, humidity, shock and vibration. We encompass reliability-by-design into our process as one key aspect of our system development methodology, this covers Mechanical, Electronic and Software aspects of the design. We offer Functional Hazard Analysis (FHA), Functional Failure Analysis (FFA) and Design/Manufacture/Process Failure Mode and Effect (and Criticality) Analysis (or xFMEA) services as standalone or combined support to clients if required, and have detailed material, metallurgy and component understanding of the physics-of-failure to aid the delivery of higher reliability system solutions.
Overview
Verification and Validation is a necessary process in the development of any product. Hexagons services team have years of experience in supporting customers with the V&V process from helping to determine what tests and procedures are necessary to virtual testing and correlation of simulation with real world results.
While modern development processes are heavily model-based supported by a great deal of detailed analysis in key performance areas, helping ensure a Right First Time solution, there remains a need for physical verification testing and validation to ensure that all functional and non-functional requirements have been achieved. We have a wide range of hands on expertise in specifying and designing complex test system solutions, understanding the equipment and interfaces required to provide high quality and accurate test data. We can also manage the production and integration of the system under test, including a staged approach to verification testing where required to manage risk prior to whole system integration and testing. We offer full testing capability services, including commissioning and calibration, functional testing, performance testing, safety testing (including fault injection etc.) and environmental withstand testing.
As we have a great deal of experience in product development and testing, we have obtained a large quantity of test data which we have used to validate our software toolchain, algorithms and models employed – ever improving our Right First Time virtual verification capability. It is also noteworthy to point out that we can help identify, audit and select appropriate suppliers, and establish production quality assurance through processes including Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) and Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP).
Overview
Our Design Services business prides itself of lean-engineering and specifically 'on-time, on-plan and on-budget' solutions, delivering successful system and product solutions to meet client needs Right First Time. We offer process review and improvement services for clients, enabling quality-by-design whilst reducing both cost and timescales – sharing our innovation in enabling shorter development lifecycles whilst retaining (and often improving) system quality attributes. In short, we can use our expert engineering experience and tools to deliver lean engineering process innovation, including virtual verification, reducing both physical testing overheads and general time to market. We offer Problem Investigation and Resolution services across the entire V-lifecycle – Design, Manufacturing, Integration and Testing. We can provide independent and objective process auditing to help demonstrate compliance to standards (e.g. Functional Safety ISO 26262), including where improvements could be made, and demonstration of industry good and best practice. We pride ourselves on data-driven solutions, embedding Systems Engineering tools and methodology, again, we can transfer such capability into the Client's lifecycle management processes - supporting Digital Transformation of their framework, as well as developing new frameworks and process if the client is entering a new market segment within the field of Electrification or Mechatronics.
Example projects
Your benefits with Hexagon's design services
Expertise – We have an in-house engineering design and development capability with experience covering a number of key industry sectors and applications (Aero, Energy, Automotive, Rail, Nuclear, Marine etc), with a solid understanding of total quality and lifecycle requirements, as well as good and best practice, which enables our process and toolchain methodology to be class-leading, also resulting in optimised, high performance design solutions.
Ownership – We are not like other Tier 1/2s. We transfer all design IP to our customer on any project we work on and provide white-box solutions.
Upskilling – We provide training/knowledge transfer as part of all projects, enabling our customers to transform in-house capability alongside product development.
OEM – We develop the simulations software and have the engineering expertise to combine the benefits of both. We are able to leverage expertise from across our organisation to support a project or customer need.
