Hexagon acquires fatigue simulation company CAEfatigue to enhance smart factory capabilities

On March 17, Hexagon Group announced the acquisition of CAEfatigue Limited, a mechanical fatigue simulation solution company, to improve the design, quality and reliability of manufacturing products and further enhance Hexagon's solution portfolio in the fields of smart factories and smart industries.

From manufacturing to the end of a product's life, it will face a large number of stress amplitude changes during its service life. These stress amplitude changes will cause fatigue of the product itself, resulting in a series of consequences such as structural failure and safety issues. For example, the chassis of a car needs to be able to withstand a variety of dynamic forces caused by road unevenness, vehicle speed and different types of movement during hundreds of thousands of kilometers of driving. Similarly, the piping systems in industrial facilities are also in long-term operation and need to withstand dynamic changes in temperature, pressure, weight and other forces. Through fatigue simulation analysis of digital twin systems, manufacturers and engineers can predict the service life of products and improve their quality in the design stage before production begins.

The CAEfatigue software suite, including its flagship product CAEfatigue Vibration, provides industry-leading performance and accuracy through frequency domain analysis, which provides faster, more accurate and more intuitive qualitative analysis of system behavior compared to time domain methods. CAEfatigue's solutions are used by global manufacturers in multiple industries including automotive and aerospace, and can interoperate with leading computer-aided engineering (CAE) software packages.

"CAEfatigue provides a design validation and manufacturing method solution from material selection to production manufacturing process, improving product quality and life through decisions made at the design stage, while saving time, reducing costs and eliminating waste," said Ola Rollén, President and CEO of Hexagon. "These technologies not only provide a valuable addition to our smart factory solution portfolio, but also enhance our smart industrial facility solution portfolio, which already includes a set of leading analytical tools for customers to use in the design and operation of process plants."

Founded in 2012, the UK-based CAEfatigue team is comprised of internationally recognized fatigue research experts and will become part of Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence following the acquisition.