ANSYS in the Spotlight with Festival Stage Engineering Simulation

Lights, Camera, Action for Movie and Opera Made Possible with ANSYS Behind the Scenes

SOUTHPOINTE, Pa - ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, today announced that an on-location stage in the recent James Bond film was engineered using its software. In designing the world’s largest outdoor floating stage, on Europe’s Lake Constance, engineers faced a number of challenges in optimizing the structure to meet safety and other civil engineering requirements — and all without the need to expend time and money to construct a prototype for physical testing.

“In constructing the floating stage, there is obviously no opportunity for building prototypes or making design changes along the way,” said civil engineer Gerhard Lener. “Also, the opening date of the festival is set long in advance, so the completion date cannot be changed. The safety of the singers, the stage crew and the audience depends upon getting the design right the very first time. The use of ANSYS gave the entire project team confidence in the analysis results.”

The stage originally was designed for Austria’s Bregenz Festival, which builds a stunning new platform every two years for open-air opera performances. Sited at the edge of a lake, the structure is 150 feet high by 100 feet wide. The stage’s scenery features an imposing representation of a human eye that serves both as surrealistic backdrop and metaphor. Far more than a static background, the 30-foot-diameter eye was engineered to rotate and fold out via hydraulics, creating a horizontal performance space. The iris also serves as a screen for special visual effects and a door that opens to reveal yet another scene.

The entire set weighs over 450 tons. When the decision was made to film the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace with the festival stage as part of the plot, 1.5 tons of additional lights had to be installed in the structure. This required a separate simulation, which indicated that the structure needed to be strengthened.

Engineer Lener used software from ANSYS to ensure the stage could withstand environmental stresses such as wind, safely support props, actors and equipment, and survive the construction assembly process. CADFEM, an ANSYS channel partner in Germany and the competence center for finite element modeling (FEM) in that region, supported Lener in his use of the software. One of the biggest challenges was providing the strength needed to safely move the eye while staying within the weight limits of the foundation. Further challenges resulted from the components’ materials. The eye structure is a composite, a steel frame with a wood outer surface. The composite construction increased the complexity of the analysis, since connecting the steel and wood together provides additional stiffness. By using the nonlinear capabilities of ANSYS software, Lener was able to accurately predict the physics involved in these complex analysis tasks.

“The broad set of analysis capabilities in software from ANSYS provided the ideal toolset to analyze the stage because it let us evaluate the structure from every possible standpoint within a single environment. In my work on other floating stages for the Bregenz festival, I have encountered a very wide range of structural analysis problems, and technology from ANSYS has been able to handle every one,” said Lener.