e-Xstream engineering, an MSC Software Company, and software developer of Digimat, a nonlinear multi-scale material and structure modeling platform has announced the new release of Digimat 5.0.1. The new capabilities in this release significantly improve the user friendliness of analyzing fiber reinforced plastics and the accuracy of analyzing unidirectional (UD) and woven composites.

Release Highlights:

New User Interface for Reinforced Plastics Analysis
Digimat-RP (“Reinforced Plastics”) now provides engineers with a guided workflow tool that aids in the setup and streamlines the process of accurate analysis of plastic parts in a robust, fast and easy manner. It bridges the gap between injection molding and nonlinear FEA of plastic parts.

The new release supports the setup of 3D analyses with Marc, MSC Nastran, Abaqus, Ansys, and LS-Dyna based on Moldflow, Moldex3D, Sigmasoft or Timon 3D processing results. All Digimat solution technologies are supported. Jobs can either be run and monitored on a local computer or packaged for the remote solution on a cluster. Digimat-RP is an intuitive 3-step process that enables a part engineer (not necessarily a material expert) to do predictive analysis of plastic parts using one single process oriented product (RP) instead of the original four. RP is easy to learn and to use by “non-experts”. The experts can continue to use the general-purpose building blocks and prepare the models for easy use in RP.

Progressive Failure of UD Composite Materials
Digimat now offers a Matzenmiller-Lubliner-Taylor (MLT) based model for the progressive failure of UD composite materials. Failure progression includes individual damage control functions as well as stabilization of failure progression for coupled analyses. In initial studies, 97% accuracy on open hole tension test could be reached.

Nonlinear Multi-Scale Modeling with Digimat and Nastran Sol 700
MSC Nastran SOL700 is now available in the Digimat-CAE/Nastran interface supporting MSC Nastran 2013.1.

Improved Robustness for Woven Composites
The Hybrid solution method has been enhanced to support elastic, elastoplastic and elasto-viscoplastic material models for woven composites including per-phase failure.

Thermal & Thermo-Mechanical Analysis
Anisotropic thermal conductivity can be used in coupled analyses with Digimat-CAE/Abaqus. Thermo-mechanical analyses are available via Digimat-CAE/Marc. Robustness has been improved by offering RE of TEP material models in MX and the support of TE and TEP within the Hybrid solution method.

MSC Software
www.mscsoftware.com