Transcript

When designing luxury watches, precision is vital. Software from ANSYS provided the accuracy required to design a watch to our exacting specifi cations. This reduced the need for costly prototypes and helped Audemars Piguet to reduce development time by half.Tiavina NiaritsiryHead of Numerical and Optimization EngineeringAudemars Piguet & Cie SA

+ Audemars Piguet & Cie SA

Case Study

Watch mechanisms require accurate and detailed design and manufacturing with precision within one-thousandth of a millimeter. Fine watches are built with a large number of fl exible high-precision components that work together in a small but highly accurate moving assembly. Audemars Piguet & Cie relies on simulation to ensure extremely high quality in watch mechanisms.

ChallengesOne critical high-precision component within a watch is the date display mechanism that

changes the date exactly every 24 hours. The mechanism needs to advance the date in a way that appears instantaneous to the human eye (usually within 0.015 seconds), and, of course, it must reveal the correct next date. This is accomplished via a jumper, spring and trigger cam to rotate the display disk exactly

one date step. These fi ne watch mechanisms tra-ditionally were designed using prototyping, which is a very costly and iterative process. Simulation can reduce the need for prototypes signifi cantly, but the precise and fl exible components within the watch mechanism’s dynamic system require extremely accurate nonlinear dynamics capabili-ties to characterize correctly.

Technology UsedANSYS® Mechanical™, ANSYS® LS-DYNA®

Engineering Solution• Use ANSYS transient dynamic and explicit

solutions to analyze the dynamic behavior of the date display mechanism.

Audemars Piguet & Cie SA

ANSYS simulation is combined with Swiss precision to reduce development time at one of world’s most luxurious and exclusive watch manufacturers.

• Employ nonlinear contact behavior to accurately model the moving mechanism of the date display.

• Analyze and compare the behavior of diff erent design models and improve the mechanism based on simulation results.

• Compare the simulation results with real tests which, in this case, showed outstanding agreement.

Benefi ts• ANSYS software allows designers to model and

analyze the transient dynamics of the mecha-nism to the exacting precision required by the watch industry.

• The mechanism developed using ANSYS simu-lation met all relevant performance criteria. As a result, this model was launched into produc-tion without any further prototypes.

• Audemars Piguet reduced development time by half while designing a precision luxury watch.

Company DescriptionAudemars Piguet was founded in 1875 to develop and craft precision watches equipped with com-plex mechanisms. Over the years, this maker of fi ne timepieces has pushed the boundaries and developed many fi rsts in watch making. Today, Swiss precision still characterizes the company and its exceptional timepieces.

Simulation at Audemars Piguet & Cie is supported by ANSYS channel partner CADFEM (Suisse) AG.

ANSYS, [email protected]© 2012 ANSYS, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Date mechanism geometry

Date mechanism geometry


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