Giulio Turinetti, Technical Director, Altair Italy

JEC Composites Magazine: What emerging materials or technologies do you believe will have the greatest impact on the composites industry in the coming years? How is your company preparing for these changes?
Giulio Turinetti: The capability to engineer new composite materials is becoming more and more important in the market, that’s why we believe that making decisions at the early stage of design is crucial. Among composite materials, we can mention multifunctional composites, which have incredible properties such as auto-healing or shape-changing under electrical tension or electromagnetic shielding. Their main applications are in the aerospace and defence market.

As Altair, we continue to research these applications together with the biggest OEMs and universities. 

JEC Composites Magazine: How is Altair responding to emerging trends or market demands, such as eVTOL, electric vehicles and hydrogen use? Are there any particularly innovative or exciting use cases you can share with us?
Giulio Turinetti: That’s a very interesting question. Actually, Altair always pushes new technologies first. For example, electric vehicle design is at the heart of many solutions we offer. Electrical devices are, by definition, multiphysics, so even the way to design them needs to reflect this complexity from the very beginning. Vertical solutions such as our e-Motor Director design environment or our multi-year experience in topology optimisation are not just tools, but expertise we offer every day to our customers. One of the most exciting applications is battery design, where our development team is shaping new ways to simulate complex behaviours such as thermal runaway or develop composite  solutions for optimizing thermal shields that meet both thermal and crash requirements.

JEC Composites Magazine: What role does Altair expect to play in the future of the composites industry? What will be your main goal?
Giulio Turinetti: I think we will continue to help engineers and designers push the limits of composite structures, starting from optimised shapes, including in the simulation of the manufacturing rules that turn a fancy idea into a real product. Nevertheless, our technology, together with very talented people, will help companies take into account the complexity inside composite materials, using the multi-scale approach from micro to macro scale phenomena including fracture and damage.

JEC Composites Magazine: Can you outline your company’s sustainability vision and its dedication to making a positive contribution to society?
Giulio Turinetti: I’m very proud to belong to this company, where performance is not the only driver to create successful products, but also sustainability. For example, I’m thinking of the weight and balance tool we have. Altair Weight Analytics will include CO₂ indications helping companies to monitor and track CO₂ consumption, as well as this KPI in their design process.

Another aspect is our fast system modelling simulation. Altair Activate, which is the building block for our digital twin platform, allows a quick optimisation of energy consumption on many devices. To conclude with composite design and optimisation strategies, we are working to improve orthopaedic prostheses that will be lighter and more comfortable. 

*Giulio Turinetti has a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin