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Heavy Machinery:
Simulation and Shared Engineering at Siempelkamp Group
The Siempelkamp Group is an international supplier of
equipment covering diverse market segments of industry.
The roots of the company, founded in 1883 and still a
family-owned business, are in the design and manufacture
of machinery, plant design, and foundry technology. Today,
the fi ve business units are Machinery and Plants, Industrial
Automation, Nuclear Technology, Foundry, and Metal Forming.
As a global player with approximately 2,500 employees,
Siempelkamp generates an annual turnover of over
500M Euros (2004).
It all started in 1883, with the invention of the perforated
heating platen for textile presses on which Gerhard Siempelkamp
founded his company, focusing on the development of
complete presses. Even during the early years, the company’s
aim was to supply not just a product to its customers, but a
solution to their problems, too. This was achieved by offering
additional engineering services and combining mechanical
and process engineering.
In the 1980s and 1990s, plants became increasingly more
complex and were automated using modern data processing
technology and software systems for process optimization
and production management.
Approximately 60 design engineers work at the Siempelkamp
Group’s Krefeld site, developing new applications and
machines. Ten of these engineers apply different simulation
software tools, such as ANSYS Mechanical, ANSYS Professional,
and ANSYS DesignModeler.
In 1995, Siempelkamp decided to use the ANSYS program
for Finite Element Analyses (FEA). Owing to a growing
demand for solving problems and performing analyses to
produce reliable machines, the number of engineers using
FEA increased from 4 to 10. Most of the FEA users’ work
involves investigating the linear elastic behaviour of complex
structures and components. Thermal problems are another
important application area.
A recent challenge in the fi eld of FEA was the analysis of
both all components and the entire frame of a 12-daylight
press (Fig. 1) designed for the production of wooden panels
with a size of almost 4 x 11 meters.
Eight hydraulic press cylinders, each with a piston diameter
of over a meter, provide a pressing force of 210.00 kN.
The press is designed as an upstroke press, and its frame is
formed of several elements. The individual lateral stands are
connected to the upper and lower crossbeams, thus forming
the press frame. The elements are not welded but, in order
Case Studies
CADFEM GmbH INFOPLANER 2/2005
Fig. 1: View of the
12-daylight press
A: Upper press table
B: Lateral stands
C: Heating platens
D: Closing mechanism
E: Lower press table
F: Frame beams
G: Man
to achieve greater fatigue strength, assembled and fastened
using bolts instead.
Considering that each press table is an enormous 4 m x 11
m in size, 1.8 m thick and (unfi nished) weighs 215 tons, the
entire Siempelkamp know-how and the synergies within the
Siempelkamp Group can be observed in the production of
heavy castings such as upper and lower press tables. This
kind of work is naturally carried out by the Siempelkamp
Foundry Branch, Krefeld.
The casting takes 3 weeks to cool suffi ciently to enable their
removal from the molds. They are then transported on a special
truck to the adjacent Siempelkamp Machinery Branch,
where they are subjected to the fi nal stages of treatment.
Heating platens for the presses are also manufactured in the
Krefeld factory. To this end, two plates with a thickness of
200 mm are joined by means of SAW (submerged-arc welding)
to form a 4.1 x 10.73 m platen. At this stage, the platen