Specialized Accelerates Engineering Breakthroughs On Rescale
Specialized’s R&D Engineers Push the Limits of Innovation
Up against the limits of their internal compute capacity, Specialized Bicycle Components needed a more flexible and simplified solution to power their computer-aided engineering simulations. Before gaining access to massively distributed compute on Rescale, their R&D teams faced slow solve speeds which constrained product design cycles. Rescale provided instant access to compute scale and over 600 HPC applications to simulate their bike frames’ drag, weight, and stiffness and overall performance. This enabled their engineers to generate and simulate more iterations of product designs and configurations in less time.
Breaking Away from Compute Constraints
In a hyper-competitive industry, Specialized’s mission is to be the best cycling brand in the world. Today they sponsor the top #1 and #2 professional cycling teams in the world. Bicycle R&D teams face pressure to come up with better bicycle shapes and components each year with improved quality and performance. While Specialized operates a proprietary wind tunnel for performance testing, they also employ computer aided engineering. Using Simcenter STAR-CCM+, a complete CFD multiphysics solution for the simulation of products and designs available on Rescale, they gain a competitive edge in R&D prototyping. Prior to adopting Rescale, Specialized’s existing simulation workstations became insufficient for the Road Bike R&D team’s growing high performance computing needs.
In order to increase the accuracy, scale, and speed of simulations needed to drive new innovations, Senior R&D Engineer, Mio Suzuki, quickly onboarded Rescale to fill the need. Mio explains:
“Previously we were constrained by a workstation with only a small number of cores, whereas Rescale doesn’t have limits on cores or memory. So we can run hundreds of simulations in parallel. We aim to rapid prototype at a startup’s pace and always incorporate the latest technologies. With Rescale I can fine tune the simulation and massively distribute the solving process. We can compile different kinds of answers and then down select to the best design choice. Before using Rescale, the Specialized Road team was using mostly wind tunnel testing, and now the ratio has completely flipped.”
From Compute Constrained to Compute Empowered
Specialized now tests hundreds more iterations of bicycle frame geometries and material combinations in less time by optimizing their compute resources on Rescale. The R&D team can quickly and easily leverage the most optimal software and hardware options as soon as they come available. This ensures that they always have the innovation capacity, agility, performance, and efficiency they need to continue being a leader of best-in-breed bicycles.