Audemars Piguet - Case Study

Case Study
+ Audemars Piguet & Cie SA
When designing luxury watches, precision is vital. Software from ANSYS provided
the accuracy required to design a watch to our exacting specifications. This reduced
the need for costly prototypes and helped Audemars Piguet to reduce development
time by half.
Tiavina Niaritsiry
Head of Numerical and Optimization Engineering
Audemars Piguet & Cie SA
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.
Date mechanism geometry
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 flexible highprecision 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.
Date mechanism geometry
Challenges
One 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 fine watch mechanisms traditionally were designed using prototyping, which
is a very costly and iterative process. Simulation
can reduce the need for prototypes significantly,
but the precise and flexible components within
the watch mechanism’s dynamic system require
extremely accurate nonlinear dynamics capabilities to characterize correctly.
Technology Used
ANSYS® Mechanical™, ANSYS® LS-DYNA®
Engineering Solution
• Use ANSYS transient dynamic and explicit
solutions to analyze the dynamic behavior of
the date display mechanism.
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• Employ nonlinear contact behavior to
accurately model the moving mechanism
of the date display.
• Analyze and compare the behavior of different
design models and improve the mechanism
based on simulation results.
• Compare the simulation results with real tests
which, in this case, showed outstanding
agreement.
Benefits
• ANSYS software allows designers to model and
analyze the transient dynamics of the mechanism to the exacting precision required by the
watch industry.
• The mechanism developed using ANSYS simulation met all relevant performance criteria. As
a result, this model was launched into production without any further prototypes.
• Audemars Piguet reduced development time
by half while designing a precision luxury
watch.
Company Description
Audemars Piguet was founded in 1875 to develop
and craft precision watches equipped with complex mechanisms. Over the years, this maker of
fine timepieces has pushed the boundaries and
developed many firsts 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, Inc.
www.ansys.com
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