An introduction to our new member Vectayn Ltd.
Vectayn Ltd is an Engineering consultancy specialising in high quality, predictive analysis. Established in 1991 Vectayn was originally set up to support the application development of various plastics compounds. The business grew into supporting product development, initially with plastic components and assemblies in the auto industry before expanding to include he majority of aspects of vehicle development. In the process Vectayn has branched out into other industries including aerospace, defence, medical and logistical.
Many products require physical testing to ensure compliance with various regulatory requirements but using testing as a development tool is extremely costly both in terms of the test costs but also the costs of prototype development. Predictive analysis builds virtual representations of physical parts and can rapidly and relatively cheaply assess a range of designs before the prototypes are built. More recent advances enable product optimisation where the requirements can be given as an input, along with a design envelope, with the output being a design which meets the requirements, further reducing time to market.
Another, often overlooked, advantage of predictive analysis is the ability to fully investigate system performance. Typically, in a test, the ability to review the results are limited by the number of cameras and angles set up prior to the test and the instrumentation employed. What you can review post test is determined by the decisions made pre-test. In the event where the unexpected occurs it is not possible to move a camera to get a better look after the event. With a computational model the whole event can be monitored from any angle and measurements taken from any point at any time. This makes it far easier and often more accurate to determine why the product performs as it does.
Vectayn recognises the importance of rigorous and traceable processes in product development. To this end Vectayn is regulated by BSI to the ISO 9001:2015 quality standard.
Since 2021 Vectayn has been providing analysis support for the development of HVM solutions. MIRA was employed by the UK Government to generate a series of analysis models, correlated against a range of HVM solutions and to a range of standards (namely PAS68:2013, IWA-1:2013 and ASTM F2556-18). The models were created to help with the development of HVM solutions by providing a consistency of impactor vehicle and by providing a vehicle impactor closely aligned with what would be expected in a test environment.
Vectayn has close ties with MIRA and now holds these impactor vehicle models on behalf of the UK Government. In addition to this Vectayn employs personnel who played a vital role in the model build and correlation exercise. A by-product of this is a wide experience of both the physical and analytical considerations of HVM design.
The use of analytical models can help both in the development of HVM solutions but, when correlated against a test result, can investigate a range of outlier cases (e.g. alternative foundation conditions) to understand performance more broadly without the need for further testing. Analysis can even be used to understand the performance of an HVM solution under repeated lower speed impacts by superimposing the results from the first analysis to a second analysis.
If you would like to learn more about Vectayn’s capabilities and how they could assist you with HVM development, please contact Vectayn at enquiries@vectayn.com