3D CAD World

Over 50,000 3D CAD Tips & Tutorials. 3D CAD News by applications and CAD industry news.

3D CAD Package Tips

Multiphysics for IronCAD 2020 released

By Leave a Comment

IronCAD, a leading provider of design productivity solutions, announced the immediate availability of the latest version of its fully integrated Multiphysics for IronCAD (MPIC).

Since the unveiling of Multiphysics for IronCAD, the usability and robustness of MPIC have been appreciated by many IronCAD users. Each year, additional improvements and refinement have been added to further increase the ease of use as well as the functionalities that sets it apart from the competition. Most of these new features are based on user feedback and requests to speed up the design cycle, simplify analysis setup, and reduce analysis times.

MPIC 2020, includes several new and improved key technologies designed specifically for CAD design analysis. IronCAD’s focus was on general CAD designers and users who want to adopt design analysis earlier in the digital prototyping cycle and aim to provide accurate, realistic and quick analysis. As such, most of these improvements are in the assembly analysis functionalities.

Some of MPIC 2020 new technologies and features include:

• New tolerance assembly analysis technology is implemented with respect to how parts are assembled and meshed for analysis. This new option uses parts’ discrete boundary surface facets to smartly unite parts together for design analysis. This technology enables the healing of CAD assembly models with intentional or unintentional gaps so they can be glued together for quick design analysis.

• New drag-and-drop user interface has been implemented in the part tree of materials, boundary condition constraints, and load areas. Users can select the part’s tree node and drag it to a different material tree to quickly assign it to a different material. In boundary condition constraints and loading, the sequence of the priority of the constraint can also be changed by selecting the condition and drag it up/down to change the priority of the boundary condition.

• MPIC model is now upgraded to XMD 2.2 model and compatible with all AMPS product lines. It can be opened, modified, and analyzed by any AMPS XMD application if additional features/capabilities are needed.

Multiphysics for IronCAD offers basic to advance versions that include non-linear, fluid, dynamics, and rigid body kinematics. Once installed, users have access to the full functionality limited to 2000 mesh nodes that can be used to get started with the analysis application. You can access the latest Multiphysics for IronCAD 2020.

“This new release with new tolerance assembly analysis technology will streamline the design analysis for design engineering beyond anything in the market today” stated Cary O’Connor, V.P. of Marketing of IronCAD. “Users will be able to quickly design products and assemblies with accurate design simulation easily without having to struggle with gaps and inaccuracies often found in CAD designs that don’t fully model manufacturing processes such as welds and fixturing. Overall, users can improve designs and design-to-product times with this new functionality” he continued.

Dr. Ted Lin of AMPS Technologies, developers of MPIC, and meshing technology partner Dr. Mark Beall, President of Simmetrix Inc. says, “For more than three years of development and testing, our team has taken on this task to resolve this well-known problem in CAD models. This new technology gives the user more control over gluing together parts in assembly models with intentional or unintentional gaps for quick design analysis that virtually eliminates the CAD modeling inaccuracy issues that users struggled to resolve in the past.”

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com

Latest Simcenter 3D enhancements deliver better insight into product performance

By Leave a Comment

Siemens Digital Industries Software announced the latest version of Simcenter 3D software, part of the Simcenter portfolio of simulation and test solutions. Simcenter 3D helps product engineering teams be more productive and produce consistent simulation results with a unified, easy-to-use shared platform covering most simulation disciplines. The latest version delivers the most comprehensive, fully-integrated CAE solution on the market today, to help optimize design and deliver innovations faster and with greater confidence.

The latest release of Simcenter 3D includes many improvements in four key areas:

Multidiscipline Integration: Simcenter 3D offers new simulation methods that increase realism and deliver better insight into product performance. Industrially validated rotor dynamics simulation capabilities have been extended, to include nonlinear connection elements, for example, allowing engineers to minimize rotational unbalance and unnecessary external forces in applications such as aircraft engines, gas turbines, automotive engines, industrial equipment, and even electronics, for example when computer disk drives spin at high rates.

Improved Simcenter 3D rotor dynamics simulation solutions allow you to minimize rotational unbalance and unnecessary external forces in applications such as aircraft engines, gas turbines, automotive engines, industrial equipment, and even electronics.

Faster CAE Processes: New Noise Vibration and Harshness (NVH) composer tool helps engineers quickly create system-level finite-element (FE) models, starting from subassembly models such as an automotive body-in-white, door, suspension, and more. Automating the full-vehicle FE model increases process speed and helps reduce human error.

Ties to the Digital Thread: The seamless integration with data management from Simcenter is extended to enhanced ties to the physical testing group. Deeper test/analysis correlation capabilities from Simcenter 3D, such as new pre-test planning for determining sensor locations, can help determine the best methods to use for physical testing and increase confidence that simulations are accurately predicting real-world results.

Open and Scalable: Simcenter 3D is an open environment where engineers and designers can gain the benefits of faster CAE processes by using Simcenter 3D in connection with other CAE solvers. Added support for cyclic symmetry can help engineers simplify the modeling and simulation process for components when using the Abaqus solver.

Simcenter 3D and the Simcenter portfolio are part of the Xcelerator portfolio, Siemens’ integrated portfolio of software, services and application development platform.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com

How to combine 1D and 3D thermal simulation for modeling aircraft fuel systems

By Leave a Comment

Leveraging advanced 3D CAD-embedded CFD capabilities can add robustness and fidelity to a 1D system model.

By Mike Croegaert, Siemens Digital Industries Software

A common issue with modeling complex 1D systems is adding the required detail for complex components that cannot easily be represented through correlations or empirical data. To get the data for these types of components, engineers have two options: physical testing and 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation and analysis. Physical testing can be costly and obtaining the data can be difficult for all possible operating scenarios. Whereas, 3D CFD can be time-consuming and often requires an expert to get reliable results.

Fortunately, we now have the option to use advanced 3D CAD-embedded CFD solutions in conjunction with 1D CFD tools to quickly and accurately characterize complex components without the need for a specialist, while providing an added level of robustness to a complex system model.

The basic fuel system: solving pump limitations
To illustrate the effectiveness of using this combination, a simple passenger aircraft fuel system example will be used. Figure 1 shows a 1D system model drawn on top of the basic fuel system schematic image. It includes source components for the boundary conditions and extra loss components for items such as filters and couplings. The thin link lines represent a direct connection between adjacent components, but they are not pipes themselves. Nodes sit in the middle of the links and serve as convenient points to enter elevation data and interrogate flow results of temperature and total pressure.

Figure 1: Basic aircraft fuel system schematic. The three large blue sections represent the wing and the center fuel tanks, the white boxes represent pumps, and the fuel feed and transfer plumbing is represented in green. The refueling lines are represented in dark blue. Shut-off valves are depicted throughout the model as the circular symbols, indicating normally open or closed.

During normal operation, the fuel is drawn from the tanks with mechanical fuel pumps. However, most mechanical pumps must be fully wetted to function properly. This means sometimes unusable fuel is left in the bottom of the tank. To extract the residual fuel, jet pumps can be added with the suction side connected to the lowest sump point on the inner wing tank. This pump feeds the collector cell by using the motive energy provided by a small amount of high-pressure fuel bled directly from the mechanical fuel pumps. For this example, the jet pumps are placed in the lowest portion of the tank.

In contrast to most other components, this jet pump does not come pre-supplied with performance data. That leaves the designer with two options to define performance. The first method is to enter detailed geometry for the pump and the 1D CFD tool can apply a built-in empirical correlation for jet pump behavior. The second option is a more rigorous databased approach. The pump requires a curve of flow ratio versus head ratio and a curve of motive flow rate versus pressure difference between the motive and suction arms. This data can come from many sources, including the vendor of the pump, physical testing, or 3D CFD characterization and analysis.

3D-1D characterization
Sophisticated 3D CAD-embedded CFD programs have key technologies that facilitate 1D data generation. These tools can be used by the typical engineer as well as seasoned CFD analysts. They apply automated modified wall functions to capture boundary layer effects properly, regardless of the density of the mesh in the boundary layer. They also have an automated solver to determine the flow regime between laminar, turbulent, or transitional without intervention. The most advanced 3D CAD-embedded CFD software has a unique and automated mesher that is geometry aware. If the CAD geometry changes, the mesh changes automatically, updating as the problem solves, intelligently putting more mesh where it is needed. Because these tools are completely CAD-embedded, the designer can run parametric studies, by not only varying flow conditions, but also changing the actual geometry over the course of a study, feeding data back to the 1D CFD software as seamlessly as possible.

Using an intuitive graphical interface, the designer inputs the key variables—choosing the units, the physics to consider in the simulation (including heat transfer, gravity effects and rotation), the fluids to use in the simulation, and lastly, the initial conditions such as temperature, pressure, and initial velocity. The 3D software then calculates a computational domain surrounding the relevant fluid geometry. The design engineer can resize the domain area or even slice the volume in half and do an axisymmetric simulation to save computational resources. The mesh (Figure 2), although highly automated, can be manually driven to add grid cells where needed and manually refined by selecting specific geometry, adding optional control planes, or even disabled bodies into the CAD model to serve as the mesh structure.

Figure 2: 3D CAD-embedded CFD adaptive mesh.

Once the model is prepared, the boundary conditions set, and goals determined, the simulation is ready to run launching the solver. The solver is the only aspect of 3D CAD-embedded CFD that does not operate directly in the CAD environment. Instead, a second window is launched to monitor the progress of the solution. Custom-defined preview plots for parameters such as pressure, velocity, and even the mesh can be created. Goals can also be plotted to have a real-time monitor on current value and their trend toward convergence. Parametric studies can also be performed on multiple machines at once to improve performance.

Once complete, the results are loaded back into the CAD interface, the first example of a result is a cut plot that shows the contours of velocity with overlaid streamlines (Figure 3). The cut plane can be manually adjusted with a live preview. 3D CAD-embedded CFD can also generate three dimensional flow trajectories inside of the fluid region.

Figure 3: Sample results from 3D CAD-embedded CFD.

Typically, for characterizing a component using 1D CFD software, multiple simulations are needed to generate data over a range of flow conditions. Once the study is complete, the results can be saved to a file that acts as a raw record of the flow conditions at each boundary at each experiment point. Each point contains data for flow rate, pressure, temperature, density, viscosity, enthalpy, and heat capacity. From this data, non-dimensional curves can be created so that the software can extrapolate performance of the part over a range of fluids, temperature, and pressures.

After the curves are created, they can be imported into the 1D CFD tool either as an individual data curve or as a complete component. The software will parse the data and automatically determine what type of component to create. Once this step is done, the 1D CFD software adds the component to the catalog and automatically populates it with the data just generated.

Before using the component in the fuel system model, it will first be verified in a unit test. Unlike most components, components sourced from the 3D CAD-embedded CFD program require no further data to use because relevant data such as the curves are pre-applied. All that is required to run a unit test is to add boundary conditions and run an analysis, and the component should perform exactly as the software predicted during the characterization step. After the unit test has verified the component was created correctly, the jet pump can be added to the fuel system model (Figure 4), and the designer can run a series of analyses.

Figure 4: Adding the characterized jet pump to the system model.

In this example, two transient simulation scenarios will be examined. In the first simulation, the jet pump has been included but blocked the motive flow, so the tanks will only feed into the collector cell via gravity. The connection between each section of the tanks is through a series of holes in the ribs that separate each compartment. These holes span almost the entire height of the tank, but the bottom 2-in. of the tank is blocked by structure.

As shown in Figure 5a with the blue line, the outer tank is draining briefly into the inner tank marked in red. The outer tank stops flowing as the level of fuel drops below the holes in the rib. Rendering the remaining 2-in. of fuel in that tank unusable. The inner tank in red, and the collector cell in green both drain together. The collector cell is drained via the mechanical fuel pumps, and the inner tank drains via gravity into the cell until it too reaches about 2 in. of height and can no longer drain. The tank is exhausted of all usable fuel in about 125 seconds.

Figure 5a: Scenario 1 – Jet pump inactive.
Figure 5b: Scenario 2 – Jet pump active.

The second case shown in Figure5b has the jet pump enabled. Here, the jet pump is moving fuel from the inner tank to the collector cell at a rate of about 10 gal per minute. In this case, the inner tank drains much faster, but that fuel is being transferred to the collector cell to feed the pumps. Because the suction inlet to the jet pump can be placed at the lowest point in the tank, it can drain almost all of the fuel out of it before it stops providing flow. At this point, the fuel level in the collector cell starts to drop quickly until it is completely exhausted. In this case, because more fuel is available, the tank does not drain for 320 seconds, a significant improvement.

Leveraging advanced 3D CAD-embedded CFD capabilities can add robustness and fidelity to a 1D system model. The 3D CFD solution does this by characterizing complex components within the CAD environment and then automatically importing the results into the 1D model. Here, a common issue with 1D system models of aircraft fuel systems was examined: how to add the required detail to the model for complex components that cannot easily be represented through correlations or empirical data. Siemens 3D CFD software, Simcenter FLOEFD, runs inside of several CAD packages including Siemens NX and Solid Edge, CATIA V5, PTC Creo, and a standalone version. This example also uses Siemens Flomaster 1D CFD software for the system simulation.

Until recently, designers had to choose between costly physical testing and time-consuming 3D CFD that usually requires an expert to obtain reliable results. This approach that combines 3D CAD-embedded CFD and 1D CFD can be used to quickly and accurately characterize complex components without the need for a CFD analyst and provide an added level of robustness to complex models such as the aircraft fuel system.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com

Siemens updates Simcenter Portfolio with enhanced electromagnetic-vibro-acoustic analysis capabilities

By Leave a Comment

Siemens Digital Industries Software today announced new releases of Siemens Simcenter MAGNET software and Simcenter Motorsolve software for simulating electric motor design and electromagnetic fields at any stage of the design process. Electric traction motors must be durable and NVH-compliant, however, electromagnetic forces induce mechanical vibrations which may lead to failure. The Simcenter MAGNET and Simcenter Motorsolve solution calculate the behavior of electromagnetic forces on individual components, providing an examination of the structure and materials integrities under multiple operating conditions during any phase of the design process. These new capabilities are important for implementing a realistic digital twin of electric and hybrid electric vehicle powertrains or for any application where NVH constraints are critical, such as aerospace, industrial and medical equipment.

Siemens’ approach to NVH analysis is unique since the Simcenter Motorsolve tool uses smart 2.5D technology to generate a 3D nodal force mesh model based on 2D simulations, significantly accelerating analysis with accurate results. Net forces on components can be determined using Simcenter MAGNET software, even when they are in contact, including artificial component grouping. Simcenter SPEED PC-BDC models can be seamlessly imported into Simcenter Motorsolve software for higher-resolution finite element simulations, and Simcenter 3D electromagnetic software integration can provide optimal electric motor simulation performance results. Now, design engineers can apply a wider range of real-world conditions in their electro-vibro-acoustic simulation analysis.

Siemens provides the most comprehensive automotive and transportation software portfolio in the industry, combined with an application development platform to accelerate the efforts of engineering teams to innovate with confidence. Automotive manufacturers, suppliers, technology startups and industry leaders apply Siemens comprehensive digital twin to create the most robust digital representation of automotive systems and real-world environments, blurring the boundaries between engineering domains, and between the digital and physical worlds.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com

 

IronCAD launches Design Collaboration Suite 2020

By Leave a Comment

IronCAD, the 3D CAD platform of choice among metal fabricators and custom machinery manufacturers, unveiled IRONCAD 2020 and it’s got more than just perfect vision for design productivity. Designed to increase productivity for CAD software users to get their products to market faster, this release focuses on performance, commonly asked usability items, and continued improvements on key functionality that sets IronCAD apart in the design process.

Every year, IronCAD users submit feedback with enhancement requests that matter the most for increasing the design productivity or improving the 3D to production drawing process. The IRONCAD 2020 release delivers improved large assembly performance, streamlined workflows, and new capabilities that help users design, present, and communicate their ideas faster and easier. This year’s release, the main focus was on improving the ICD (IronCAD Drawing Environment) to increase productivity. With this in mind, our goal was to improve the 3D to 2D detailing process to reduce the design to manufacturing timing with better performance, improved commands, better accessibility to common commands, faster drawing creation with our automated bulk view creation tool that enable users to go from concept to manufactured products faster.

Beyond the IronCAD Drawing Environment, IronCAD delivered performance improvements for working with large assemblies. This significant development was implemented to increase the system’s performance and to take advantage of newer hardware with multiple cores. In addition, many functional items were added to streamline the interaction with large assemblies, such as additional improvements in our Shrink Wrap commands for condensing large assemblies into workable reference geometry. With IronCAD 2020, noticeable improvements can be found importing, opening, saving, and working daily with large assembly files.

Examples amongst the new improvements in IRONCAD 2020 are:

· Large Assembly Performance – Open/Save/Import speed is improved for files that contain large structures that may have large assembly trees containing many nodes under individual assembly levels. Changes implemented have significant improvements in speed in all areas while working on large assemblies that range from 30-50% improvement.

· Real-time Interchanging of Full and Lightweight Models – Using IronCAD’s Shrink Wrap capabilities to create lightweight versions of parts and assemblies, you can dynamically interchange the fully detailed model and the lightweight model within an assembly file. This capability significantly improves the interaction with large assemblies not only on load/save but while design within the context of the full assembly.

· Many Technical Drawing/Detailing Improvements – IronCAD 2020 focused heavily on improving the speed from taking 3D Designs into production drawings ready for manufacturing. Speed improvements in creating and editing dimensions with quick access to dimension properties, Automatic Break Line support, Overall View Dimensions, 2D Catalogs support for reusable Annotations, and Spell Checker are among some of the many improvements added to improve the process.

· Commonly Requested Functionality – Focus was given to provide functionality commonly requested by our industry users. Command Search, Dockable Catalogs, 4K Support, Feature Fill Pattern, Sheet Metal Conversion and Layflat Design feature are among items added to enhance the design experience with IronCAD.

“Expanding on our recent 20th year release capabilities, IronCAD 2020 gains a significant leap in the ability to work and manage large assembly files commonly used among our custom machinery manufacturers” stated Cary O’Connor, V.P. of Marketing of IronCAD. “Users will feel improvements to the performance while working in 3D all the way through to the final production drawing output with the many improvements developed in the IronCAD Drawing Environment to speed up and aid the detailing process” he continued.

IronCAD
www.ironcad.com

Better analysis of mixed fluid-particle interactions

By Leave a Comment

Cradle Software, part of Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division, announced advanced co-simulation and post-processing capabilities that make it easier for engineers to analyze multi-physics problems and mixed fluid-particle interactions.

The Cradle CFD v2020 suite comprises scSTREAM (structured mesh) and scFLOW (next-generation unstructured mesh) Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technology. Cradle combines open cosimulation with the scPOST postprocessor.

New aero-acoustics simulation in Cradle CFD v2020 analyzes flow-induced noise in scFLOW by seamlessly connecting to the Actran acoustics simulation software through a dedicated plugin. It enables users to simulate aeroacoustics such as the noise from a car door mirror in a single software environment without learning to use acoustics software or spend time coupling systems.

Another development adds Discrete Element Method (DEM) to CFD and thermal dynamics within the scFLOW environment, reducing the complexity and manual work required to simulate fluids with particles. For example, optimizing the energy and water usage of a washing machine. Using the DEM feature, it is possible to evaluate heat transfer and filtering in isolation, or combine it with CFD analysis and other physics types.

Integration with system modeling software is also enhanced. Building on the open Functional Mockup Interface (FMI) integration already provided, Cradle now connects directly with more 1-D simulation tools. This enables customers to model complete products including electrical and mechanical subsystems in conjunction with the software’s built-in thermodynamics. Customers can easily map the heat transfer between electrical components using Cradle’s HeatPathView tool to visualize these multi-physics interactions. For example, providing optimization of heat routes in consumer electrical goods to enable system-level decision making with Maplesim or other 1-D simulation tools.

Noise from Door Mirror calculated by scFLOW2Actran.

Cosimulation with MSC Software simulation solutions including MSC Nastran, Marc and Adams have also been enhanced to rapidly generate high quality static and dynamic visualizations in scPOST. Cradle, and all MSC Software products including Actran can be accessed through the MSC One token-based licensing system so it is easy for anyone to access and use any tool to produce more realistic multi-physics simulations.

scPOST also makes product and engineering design reviews more accessible for designers, customers or business management. Any simulation through video export, virtual reality or interactive 3D models.

Cradle v2020 is available from today.

Hexagon | Cradle Software
www.mscsoftware.com/product/software-cradle
www.cradle-cfd.com

Siemens adds material modeling to Simcenter through acquisition of MultiMechanics

By Leave a Comment

Siemens announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire MultiMechanics, Inc., developer of MultiMech finite element software that helps companies virtually predict failure in advanced materials at an unprecedented level of speed and accuracy. The company plans to integrate MultiMechanics into Siemens Digital Industries Software, which will add the ability for customers to create a digital twin of materials by closely integrating materials engineering with part design, performance engineering, and manufacturing through the unique TRUE Multiscale technology for a broad range of material-driven applications. MultiMechanics’ technology helps companies to efficiently predict material properties and behavior, including failure starting at the microstructural level, at an unprecedented level of speed and accuracy. This unique technology will be incorporated into Simcenter software within Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio, implementing materials engineering into the digital workflow and establishing a pervasive link between material developers, manufacturing process developers and part designers.

“The addition of this technology enables our customers to build a digital twin of materials, which will help to shrink the innovation cycle of new products and materials, possibly saving millions of dollars and several years in development and certification in aerospace, automotive and other sectors,” explains Jan Leuridan, Senior Vice President, Simulation & Test Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Customers will have the ability to fully exploit the potential of advanced materials to optimize weight and performance in an efficient way that is not possible with classical, test-based, approaches.”

“We are excited to join Siemens and the Simcenter family,” says Flavio Souza, President and CTO, MultiMechanics, Inc. “The combination of the TRUE Multiscale technology of MultiMechanics with Simcenter 3D software will provide a strong basis for further innovation, enabling an expansion of scope of structural simulation to include multi-physics support for applications such as minimization of part distortion, prevention of voids during material flow, and prediction of visco-elastic acoustic properties.”

Digitalization, or the fourth industrial revolution, is happening today, causing disruption in the process and discrete industries, and blurring boundaries between domains, merging the virtual and real world, hardware and software, and design and manufacturing. In this dynamic environment, the ability to meet rapidly changing consumer preferences and requirements with insights and data is essential and can only be achieved through digital twins that represent and validate what is possible through a complete end-to-end workflow. Siemens‘ acquisition of MultiMechanics further expands the ability to create the most comprehensive digital twin by integrating structural computer-aided engineering (CAE) with detailed materials modeling through TRUE Multiscale technology, for a broad range of materials, including polymers, metals, composites, and ceramics. Manufacturing technologies such as injection-molding and additive manufacturing will see immediate applications, as the digital twin of materials can account for manufacturing variability and imperfections, identify the root cause of material failure at microstructure level, optimize material microstructure for best performance, and enable the creation and virtual testing of new material systems.

“We are confident that as part of Siemens, MultiMechanics’ technology can accelerate innovation in, and adoption of, complex materials, including the further penetration of composites in the automotive and aerospace industries,” said Nicolas Cudré Maroux, Chief Technology Officer of Solvay, a major customer and shareholder of MultiMechanics.

“The accuracy and speed afforded by MultiMechanics, and its efficient integration with commonly used commercial finite element software packages is changing the way we develop new materials and interact with our customers,” added Mike Blair, EVP Research and Innovation Composite Materials at Solvay.

The acquisition is due to close in November 2019. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.siemens.com/simcenter

 

nTop Platform 2.0 overcomes the geometry bottleneck

By Leave a Comment

nTopology announces the latest version of its computational-modeling software, nTop Platform 2.0, an engineering software that enables engineers to simultaneously consider geometry, performance and manufacturability within a single, reusable workflow. This release includes support for prepackaged, application-specific nTop Toolkits, letting engineers quickly learn and use its capabilities right out of the box.

nTop Platform was developed to solve engineering problems where geometry is a bottleneck. It can handle complexity and iteration with speed and ease. The prepackaged Toolkits and authoring capabilities can be used to automate engineering workflows, delivering efficiencies and scaling an organization’s best talent across the enterprise. With nTop Platform, teams can automate tasks that take hours, days or weeks with traditional design tools because of the ability to build reusable workflows.

nTopology is also partnering with industry leaders in additive manufacturing hardware to deliver new capabilities to their users. “The flexibility and high performance of nTopology software and its ability to package-up customer workflows helps us and our customers to create advanced Digital Foam,” says Fabian Krauss, Global Business Development Manager at EOS. “We use it in projects to create 3D-printed products with architected materials properties tailored to customer needs. It unlocks the true potential of generative design in additive manufacturing for Digital Foam and for many other applications.”

In addition to the new prepackaged Toolkits, nTop Platform’s authoring capabilities allow a company’s engineers to create their own proprietary toolkits, enabling secure knowledge transfer across the organization.

Lightweighting Toolkit
● Quickly and easily reduce the weight and maximize the performance of parts.
● Shell parts in seconds no matter how complex the geometry.
● Apply variable wall thickness to shelled parts.

Architected Materials Toolkit
● Engineer functional materials that perform at any scale—hundreds of unit cells, or hundreds of billions.
● Design with multifunctional requirements from the start. Structural, thermal, acoustics, or aesthetics; all with total control at any length scale.
● Optimize unit cells to create unique material properties to perfectly suit the application. Increase surface area while reducing weight. Turn geometric complexity into a competitive advantage.

Design Analysis Toolkit
● Use fully integrated simulation capabilities to seamlessly analyze parts in a single, connected workflow.
● Drive geometric parameters directly from simulation results to achieve high-performance parts that meet functional requirements.
● Integrate with the simulation tools an organization already uses, including ANSYS, Abaqus, and Nastran.

Topology Optimization Toolkit
● Discover new and innovative designs early in the product development cycle.
● Apply multiple loading conditions and optimize for a variety of performance criteria including stress, displacement, stiffness, and weight.
● Use automated geometry reconstruction tools to quickly generate instantly editable geometry.

Additive Manufacturing Toolkit
● Position, orient and prepare parts for additive manufacturing from a set of common build platforms.
● Add lattice support structures easily and quickly
● Slice parts avoiding error-prone STL files and export manufacturing data directly to machines

nTopology
www.ntopology.com

COMSOL launches Version 5.5 of COMSOL Multiphysics

By Leave a Comment

COMSOL, a leading provider of software solutions for multiphysics modeling, simulation, and application design and deployment, announces the latest version of its COMSOL Multiphysics software. In version 5.5, the Design Module provides an entirely new sketching tool for easier creation and more versatile parametric control of geometry models. New and updated solvers speed up a range of simulations. Two new add-on products, the Porous Media Flow Module and the Metal Processing Module, further expand the product suite’s multiphysics modeling power.

Parametric sketching with dimensions
The Design Module provides a new sketching tool that makes it easy to assign dimensions and constraints to planar drawings for 2D models and 3D work planes. “We have carefully integrated the new dimensions and constraints tool in the Model Builder so that it becomes a natural part of the COMSOL Multiphysics workflow,” said Daniel Bertilsson, technology manager for mathematics and computer science at COMSOL. “The new tools for dimensions and constraints can be used together with model parameters in COMSOL Multiphysics to drive the simulation, whether for a single run, parametric sweep, or parametric optimization.”

Parametric optimization of fluid flow in a microvalve using the new sketching tool with dimensions and constraints capabilities available in the Design Module.

New solver technology for Acoustics Simulations
Ultrasound technology is becoming increasingly important in a range of applications spanning from process engineering and nondestructive testing to consumer electronics. New functionality based on the time-explicit discontinuous Galerkin method enables efficient multicore computations of ultrasound propagation in solids and fluids, including realistic materials featuring damping and anisotropy. The method also has low-frequency applications, such as in seismology. The included multiphysics capabilities can seamlessly combine linear elastic wave propagation in a solid and its transition to a fluid as an acoustic pressure wave, and back again. The new elastic wave functionality is available for users of the Structural Mechanics Module, MEMS Module, and Acoustics Module. The fluid-structure acoustics coupling is available in the Acoustics Module.

 

Sound pressure field in a car interior solved with the finite element method at 7 kHz using a specialized solver for wave propagation analysis.

For frequency-domain simulations, a specialized solver for wave propagation analysis makes it possible to handle higher frequencies (shorter wavelengths) using the finite element method. The new solver can be used to analyze enclosed structures such as that of a car cabin interior as well as other acoustics simulations.

Introducing the Metal Processing Module
The new Metal Processing Module makes metal phase transformation analysis accessible within the COMSOL Multiphysics environment for applications within welding, heat treatment, and metal additive manufacturing. “The Metal Processing Module makes it possible to predict deformations, stresses, and strains resulting from wanted or unwanted heat-driven phase changes in metals,” said Mats Danielsson, technical product manager at COMSOL. “The module can be combined with any of the other COMSOL products for virtually any kind of multiphysics analysis that includes metal phase change. We envision users combining this with, for example, the Heat Transfer Module for the influence of heat radiation, the Ac/dc Module for induction hardening, and the Nonlinear Structural Materials Module for highly predictive analysis of material behavior.”

 

Residual stresses in a spur gear after quenching, calculated using the Metal Processing Module.

Introducing the Porous Media Flow Module

The Porous Media Flow Module gives users within, for example, food, pharmaceutical, and biomedical industries a wide range of transport analysis capabilities for porous media. The new add-on product includes functionality for single- and multiphase flow in porous media, drying, and transport in fractures. The flow models cover linear and nonlinear flow in saturated and variably saturated media with special options for slow and fast porous media flows. The multiphysics simulation capabilities are extensive, with functionality that includes options for calculating effective thermal properties for multicomponent systems; poroelasticity; and transport of chemical species in solid, liquid, and gas phases.

Simulation of a packed bed latent heat storage tank, using the Porous Media Flow Module.

Simplified Shape and Topology Optimization with the Optimization Module
Users working with mechanical, acoustics, electromagnetics, heat, fluid, and chemical analysis have been able to perform shape and topology optimization in COMSOL Multiphysics for many years. The Optimization Module now offers simplified setup of shape optimization with new built-in features such as moving boundaries parameterized by polynomials and built-in support for shell thickness optimization. A new smoothing operation for topology optimization ensures higher-quality geometry outputs that can be used for additional analysis and additive manufacturing. COMSOL Multiphysics now has general support for import and export of the additive manufacturing formats PLY and 3MF, in addition to the STL format that is already available.

Shape optimization of a sheet metal bracket using the Optimization Module. The structure is subjected to a bending load resulting in ridges in the optimal design.

Nonlinear Shell Analysis, Pipe Mechanics, and Random Vibration Analysis
A wide range of nonlinear analysis options are now available for shells and composite shells, including plasticity, creep, viscoplasticity, viscoelasticity, hyperelasticity, and mechanical contact. The mechanical contact modeling functionality has been extended to support any combination of solids and shells, including solid-shell, solid-composite shell, and membrane-shell. Depending on the type of analysis, these improvements will be available to users of the Structural Mechanics Module, Nonlinear Structural Materials Module, and Composite Materials Module.

For users of the Structural Mechanics Module, a new user interface for pipe mechanics provides functionality to perform stress analysis of pipe systems. The new functionality can handle a variety of pipe cross sections and can include effects from external loads, internal pressure, axial drag forces, and temperature gradients through the pipe wall.

Users of the Structural Mechanics Module can now perform random vibration analysis to study the response to loads that are represented by their power spectral density (PSD).

This allows users to include loads that are random in nature, such as turbulent wind gusts or road-induced vibrations on a vehicle. The loads can be fully correlated, uncorrelated, or have a specific user-given correlation.

The Multibody Dynamics Module provides new functionality for analyzing rigid and elastic chain drives with automatic generation of the large number of links and joints needed for modeling chain drives.

 

Elastic chain drive analysis in the Multibody Dynamics Module. Colors and arrows show the velocity and velocity direction, respectively, in the chain and sprockets.

Compressible Euler Flow and Nonisothermal Large Eddy Simulations
Users of the CFD Module will get new interfaces for compressible Euler flow and nonisothermal large eddy simulations (LES). In addition, the flow interfaces for rotating machinery now support the level set and phase field methods as well as Euler–Euler and bubbly flow. The Heat Transfer Module comes with a new interface for lumped thermal systems, an equivalent circuit modeling approach for heat transfer simulations. Radiation in semitransparent (participating) media now supports multiple spectral bands, and a new open boundary formulation for convective flow reduces solution time by 30%.

Multiscale Wave and Ray Optics, Piezoelectric Shells, and PCB Ports
The Ray Optics Module can now be combined with the RF Module or Wave Optics Module for simultaneous full-wave and ray tracing simulations. This enables multiscale modeling, such as analyzing a waveguide beaming into a large room, where using a full-wave simulation would be computationally prohibitive. Combining the AC/DC Module and the Composite Materials Module, users can now analyze layered materials with both dielectric and piezoelectric layers in thin structures. In the RF Module, a set of new ports for vias and transmission lines makes setup much quicker and gives more control to the user for modeling of printed circuit boards.

Efficient Distribution of Standalone Applications
COMSOL Compiler enables you to create standalone applications based on COMSOL Multiphysics models with specialized user interfaces that have been built with the Application Builder. Compiled applications require only COMSOL Runtime — no COMSOL Multiphysics or COMSOL Server license is required. “Since the release of COMSOL Compiler last fall, we have seen great response from our Application Builder users with this new possibility of distributing their applications in standalone form,” said Daniel Ericsson, application product manager at COMSOL. The latest version of COMSOL Compiler has a new compile option for generating minimum-sized files for easier distribution. When the user launches an application for the first time, where the new compile option has been used, COMSOL Runtime is downloaded and installed, if needed, from COMSOL’s website. Only one instance of COMSOL Runtime is needed for applications using the same COMSOL version. COMSOL Runtime has a size of about 350 MB and an application file can be as small as a few MB.

The COMSOL Runtime installer for standalone applications created with the Application Builder and compiled with COMSOL Compiler.

Highlights in Version 5.5:

–New sketching tool with dimensions and constraints

–Fast linear elastic wave simulations

–New Metal Processing Module for welding, heat treatment, and metal additive manufacturing

–New Porous Media Flow Module for food, pharmaceutical, and biomedical industries

–Improved tools for shape and topology optimization for mechanical, acoustics, electromagnetics, heat, fluid, and chemical analysis

–Import and export of the 3D printing and additive manufacturing formats PLY and 3MF

–Editing tools for repair of STL, PLY, and 3MF files

–Structural analysis of nonlinear shells, pipe mechanics, random vibration, and chain drives

–Compressible Euler flow and nonisothermal large eddy simulation (LES)

–Rotating machinery with level set, phase field, Euler–Euler, and bubbly flow

–Lumped thermal system equivalent circuits

–Multiple spectral bands for radiation in participating media

–More efficient open boundary condition for convective heat transfer

–Use of thermodynamic database properties in any simulation type

–Combined full wave and ray optics simulations

–Piezoelectric and dielectric shells

–New PCB ports for vias and transmission lines

–Link images to Microsoft PowerPoint presentations

–Create your own add-ins for customizing the Model Builder workflow

–Minimal file size standalone applications with COMSOL Compiler

Availability
COMSOL Multiphysics, COMSOL Server, and COMSOL Compiler software products are supported on the following operating systems: Windows, Linux, and macOS. The Application Builder tool is supported in the Windows operating system.

To browse version 5.5 release highlights, visit: www.comsol.com/release/5.5

To download the latest version, visit: www.comsol.com/product-download

COMSOL

PTC to acquire Onshape

By Leave a Comment

PTC announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Onshape, creators of Software as a Service (SaaS) product development platform that unites computer aided design (CAD) with data management and collaboration tools, for approximately $470 million, net of cash acquired.
The acquisition is expected to accelerate PTC’s ability to attract new customers with a SaaS-based product offering and position the company to capitalize on the inevitable industry transition to SaaS. Pending regulatory approval and satisfaction of other closing conditions, the transaction is expected to be completed in November 2019.

Located in Cambridge, MA, Onshape was founded in 2012 by CAD pioneers and tech legends, including Jon Hirschtick, John McEleney, and Dave Corcoran, inventors and former executives of SolidWorks. Onshape has secured more than $150 million in funding from leading venture capital firms and has more than 5,000 subscribers around the world. The company’s software offering is delivered in a SaaS model, making it accessible from any connected location or device, eliminating the need for costly hardware and administrative staff to maintain. Distributed and mobile teams of designers, engineers, and others can benefit from the product’s cloud nature, enabling them to improve collaboration and to dramatically reduce the time needed to bring new products to market – while simultaneously staying current with the latest software.

This acquisition is the logical next step in PTC’s overall evolution to a recurring revenue business model, the first step of which was the company’s transition to subscription licensing, completed in January 2019. The SaaS model, while nascent in the CAD and PLM market, is rapidly becoming industry best practice across most other software domains.

Onshape will operate as a business unit within PTC, with current management reporting directly to PTC President and CEO Jim Heppelmann.

Barclays acted as exclusive financial advisor to PTC on the transaction.

PTC
www.ptc.com