As the end of the year is speeding closer, we look back at the excellent work shared by our customers at our annual Users' Conference held last month and are looking forward to the Cape Town event next.

Message of the day: Don't let commercial and egotistical pressure overwhelm engineering excellence. May the Titan disaster be a stark reminder of what that means.

Gerrit Visser shares an excellent piece on MSC Nastran, our product of the month and this every day, quietly excellent, unsung hero of structural and other analyses.

And from tragedy to engineering achievement, we applaud India's lunar landing this month, making them the fourth country to achieve this.

Since it was third quarter software release time, we saw a host of new product releases and we share the highlights of these from Adams, Adams Modeler, CAEfatigue, MaterialCenter and Odyssee.

Don’t miss our handy MSC Apex tip this month on how to easily create a weld section and lastly, as the end of the year is closing in, remember to book your scheduled training for Patran/Nastran, Structure Mechanics, Cradle and FEA fundamentals.

Looking forward to Spring Day!

The focus of this page is the multiple important features that might seem small or even insignificant, yet they improve the accuracy and performance of linear analysis performed in MSC Nastran. It would be remiss not to add a note about some of the additional more advanced types of analysis that MSC Nastran is capable of. The following briefly lists some of these analysis types or features available in MSC Nastran:

• Nonlinear Static and Nonlinear Dynamic analysis with any combination of:
  • Geometric (Large strain, large deformation, and follower loads)
  • Material (plasticity, hyperelasticity etc.)
  • Contact
• Capable contact algorithms. A few of the Contact Algorithm capabilities include:
  • Touching contact without/with friction.
  • Permanent glued contact and breaking glue.
  • First and/or second order elements can be used in the same analysis.
  • Beams, shells, and solids can touch each other.
  • Geometric (complex surfaces) contact bodies are allowed and can be touched by any elements (beams, shells, or solids)
  • Contact Body based contact:
    • Elements belong to a Contact Cody.
    • Contact Bodies can touch other Contact Bodies (no need to define contact regions)
  • Splined contact to smooth the contact faces of curved regions in the mesh. Used for accurate solution when using first order elements in curved regions.
• Optimization
  • Multiple loadcase types (e.g., static, dynamic, modal etc.) can be combined in one run, each with its own design constraints (e.g., stress limits, displacement limits etc.)
  • Works even with millions of design variables (a requirement for topology optimization).
  • Manual setup is available, as well as automated methods like topology and topography optimization.
• Acoustic analysis
• Explicit time integration analysis combining structural and fluids (such as crash or blast-protection analysis).
• Local remeshing to improve accuracy in regions without requiring remeshing in the preprocessor.
• Embedded fatigue calculation capabilities to output fatigue life. Can be used in conjunction with the optimization algorithm to set minimum fatigue life.

In this month's 'Art of Engineering', we celebrate the recent lunar triumph of India's Chandrayaan-3 mission. This awe-inspiring achievement showcases the true artistry of engineering, where science and innovation merge to overcome formidable challenges. Landing on the moon, an endeavor that only a select few nations have mastered, is a testament to the precision, creativity, and dedication of engineers. Beyond national pride, it exemplifies how engineering, as an art form, shapes the future of space exploration, offering limitless possibilities and inspiring generations to dream beyond the stars.