Challenge:
Ariens engineers were tasked with a redesign of their Gravely brand zero-turn commercial lawn mower. They wanted to design the mower as efficiently as possible to cut manufacturing costs and increase fuel efficiency. Simulation would be necessary to deliver an upgraded mower that met these goals on time.
Solution:
Ariens engineers used Abaqus/CAE and fe-safe from Dassault Systèmes SIMULIA, along with Wolfstar Technologies’ True-Load, to locate and accurately model strain gauges in all areas of the lawn mower, enabling weld elimination, part-count reduction, fatigue life improvement and other design enhancements.
Benefits:
Part count of the mower frame was reduced by 50%. Testing time and costs were cut. When the new mower went through final field tests, Ariens engineers’ confidence in their simulations was supported by performance. Abaqus’ visualization tools also helped engineers communicate better with designers and upper management.
If you were wealthy enough to afford a lawn in the 17th century, you had scores of scythe-wielding men cut the luxurious green grass of your estate property. Then in 1830, English engineer Edwin Budding invented the first “push” mower—an idea that stemmed from the mechanical challenge of trimming fabric in a cloth mill. Budding designed a series of blades situated around a cylinder that could be moved back and forth with a handle. Lawn care would never be the same.
Around the time when motorization made the automobile possible in the 20th century, the first power-driven lawn mowers roared to life. Mower designs have continued to evolve since then, from ones with improved muffling and loweremission engines to ride-on and zero-turn versions. The push for ever-better lawn-care equipment continues in this multibillion dollar industry.
A major American manufacturer of both industrial and personal lawn-care equipment, Ariens Company owns the century-old Gravely® brand that produces a state-of-the-art zero-turn commercial lawn mower. “Zero-turn” allows for 180 degree rotation in a single pass, saving time and providing better maneuverability when cutting.
With the latest upgrade in the Gravely zero-turn due, Ariens engineers were tasked with a list of important challenges. “We needed to make the mower stronger, less expensive to manufacture, and more fuel efficient,” says Mathew Weglarz, lead engineer and structural analyst at the Ariens Company. “Our goal was to design a structure as simply as possible, while maintaining the mower’s ability to perform the task at hand.”
“Now that we use simulation, by the time that we do go to run a physical test of a finished redesign, we are confident that it is going to work.” —Mathew Weglarz, Lead engineer and Structural Analyst at Ariens Company
Weglarz, a longtime user of SIMULIA’s Abaqus software, proposed the idea to incorporate the SIMULIA portfolio into Ariens’ design process when he began working there two years ago. Prior to Weglarz joining the engineering team, Ariens had only occasionally used Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks Simulation to analyze certain components. With the help of Weglarz and Ariens’ structural analyst and engineer, Aleysha Kobiske, the engineering team at Ariens used a number of SIMULIA tools to drive innovation in the design of their newest Gravely mower.
Want to learn more?
Discover how Ariens leverages simulation to develop truly “cutting edge” lawnmowers!
