{"id":33012,"date":"2021-12-16T06:10:52","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T11:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simcenter\/?p=33012"},"modified":"2026-03-26T06:23:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:23:40","slug":"drop-test-simulation-for-coping-with-clumsiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simcenter\/drop-test-simulation-for-coping-with-clumsiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Drop test simulation for coping with clumsiness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Simcenter 3D has you covered!<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Who doesn\u2019t know something like this from personal experience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Walking down the road in a hurry, the phone is buzzing and suddenly \u2026 – a few hundred dollars are gone and at least the next couple of days are ruined. \u2639<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mobile phone companies have done their homework to improve the situation: Protective glasses, special cases & covers and also more rounded designs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this blog we would like to take a look behind the scenes of development of consumer products and electronic devices. In that context, drop tests are a crucial engineering aspect in the design. In all industries this engineering domain has evolved from pure testing to more and more simulation-based evaluations. While it used to be a discipline for dedicated experts only, let us take a look, how today you can more easily use drop test simulation during the design phase in order to predict and mitigate what happens when things do happen to fall down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtual Drop Test<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let us take a flashlight as a classic example of a product prone to dropping:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flashlight CAD<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Drop Test Simulation for Designers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the past – in order to perform a finite element simulation – an expert analyst would have to manually walk through the steps of finding and cleaning up the geometry, seed and mesh the parts, define boundary conditions for the simulation, perform the solve and iterate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Simcenter 3D has created a dedicated and automated drop test simulation process so that these steps can be transformed into a guided and streamlined process by engineers who are less experienced in drop test simulation methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Process Automation<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dedicated Drop Test App<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s have a look at this in practice with a customized DropTest-App. The user is actually guided through the four main steps of the process from CAD preparation, via Meshing and Simulation to Postprocessing. Let’s see this step by step:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step 1: CAD preparation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Drop test toolbar in Simcenter 3D provides a guided process<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The first task it positioning the lamp and define in which angle it will hit the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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