Dassault Systemes is
kicking it up a notch with its Abaqus
unified finite element analysis (FEA) software, adding new capabilities to take
advantage of high-performance computing along with features to better simulate
fracture and failure analysis and noise and vibration, among other areas.
An overarching theme of the 6.9
release is to leverage innovative advancements in HPC technology along with
mechatronics capabilities to make simulation technology available to a much
broader community, according to Steve Crowley, director, SIMULIA Product
Management. "This is consistent with the growing recognition of the value of
simulation as an integral part of your business process," Crowely says.
As such, a key highlight of the new Abaqus 6.9 release, from
Dassault's SIMULIA brand, is the implementation of the Extended Finite Element
Method (XFEM), a powerful tool for fracture and failure analysis via its
ability to simulate crack growth along arbitrary paths that don't correspond to
element boundaries. Such a feature could be used in the aerospace industry, for
example, to help predict the durability and damage tolerance of composite
aircraft structures, or in the energy sector to evaluate the growth of cracks
in pressure vessels.
There are additional features on the analysis front. A new
co-simulation method lets engineers combine both implicit and explicit solvers
into a single simulation, greatly reducing computation time. With this
approach, automotive engineers could combine a substructure representation of a
vehicle body with a model of the tires and suspension to see how the vehicle
would respond when running over potholes. There are also easier-to-use methods
for defining contact interactions in a model, which come in handy when modeling
complex assemblies like gear systems and hydraulic cylinders.
These new, multi-level
substructuring techniques dramatically improve performance for large scale
noise and vibration problems, Crowley
says. In addition, they, along with the new co-simulation method, are examples
of advancements in mechatronics that take advantage of new HPC platforms to
handle rapidly growing model sizes in a more cost-effective manner, he
explains.
In the modeling and visualization arena, Abaqus 6.9 sports a
variety of new surface meshing enhancements making it easier and faster to mesh
complex parts. In addition, a number of geometry import and repair tools have
been augmented to allow automatic or selective stitching of part bodies and
edges with a user-specified tolerance value.
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