SIMTEQ Newsletter September 2023

Introduction

Events

Product of the month

The art of engineering

New releases

Tips & Training

It felt like spring and summer arrived at the same time this year and as if the changes in atmospheric pressure, also transpired into severe industry pressures to get projects completed before the end of the year. When the pressure is on, it's easy to default to old habits while small adjustments could actually speedup what you need to do. With this single purpose in mind, SIMTEQ hosted a technology day in Stellenbosch to bring our customers up to speed and invited two companies to share their challenges and successes with the audience. De Beers Marine shared how they applied Adams in a successful redesign of a Nutator to prevent costly durability failures and Dragonfly Aerospace shared their unique experience having their first satellite launched successfully with Space-X from Florida into orbit. This month is also time for the quarterly new product releases and we share the latest additions in this newsletter.

Don't miss the new improvements and work smarter, not harder!

Regards

Managing Director

SIMTEQ Engineering Cape Town Tech-Day

We extend our heartfelt gratitude for the resounding success of SIMTEQ's Technology Day held in Stellenbosch. This event was designed to keep our valued customers at the forefront of technological advancements. We had the privilege of welcoming two esteemed companies to our platform. De Beers Marine shared their triumph in applying Adams to achieve a flawless Nutator redesign, effectively averting expensive durability issues. Additionally, Dragonfly Aerospace left our audience captivated with their remarkable journey, celebrating the successful launch of their inaugural satellite with SpaceX in Florida, now gracefully orbiting our world. Thank you for contributing to this extraordinary day of insight and achievement.

RAPDASA 2023

Join Us at the RAPDASA-RobMech-PRASA-AMI 2023 Conference!

We are proud to announce our participation in the esteemed 24th Annual International Conference, alongside RAPDASA, RobMech, PRASA, and AMI. This conference will take place from October 30th to November 2nd, 2023, at the CSIR International Convention Centre in Pretoria, South Africa.

Stay tuned for our exciting exhibition showcasing the latest advancements in engineering. Get ready for an extraordinary experience at the forefront of 'Advanced Manufacturing Beyond Borders.' See you there

Marc

When linear FEA just doesn’t cut it

The world is nonlinear. True, a large subset of models can be approximated as linear to great effect. For those models that cannot be approximated as linear however, we obviously must run a nonlinear analysis.

For structures, nonlinearity can come from only three major sources, each with subcategories:
- Geometric (Large displacement, Large strain, Follower loads)
- Material (Plasticity, Hyperelasticity, Failure, etc. [Any other nonlinear material effects])
- Contact (Touching contact, Friction)

This list contains all the possible nonlinear structural effects. All of them. If an FEA solver supports all of these, then it can perform nonlinear simulation, right? Right?

Well, kind of since it is a True Lie. While no other nonlinearities exist, there are additional functionalities needed to run some of the models that require nonlinear analysis.

Here are examples of functionality implemented in Marc to perform the analysis:

For the post-failure response of a structure, you need the ability to model the removal of failed regions during the analysis. Whether this is by removing failed elements during the analysis or removing the stiffness of a layer in a composite material applied to an element, without it you can only predict when failure starts, not how it will progress. Both are available in Marc in addition to other methods to model post-fracture behaviour.

Some materials undergo a significant deformation during the nonlinear process. Typical of this would be rubber materials or modelling the forging process. In these cases, the elements will become distorted to such an extent that the element accuracy degrades too much for useful results. In this case, remeshing is needed. Marc allows remeshing while solving to overcome these challenges.

Rubber models such as Ogden or Mooney-Rivlin use a polynomial approach to model the behaviour of the material. Finding these material coefficients requires curve fitting of the data sourced from a series of measurements (uniaxial, equibiaxial, biaxial, etc.). Mentat, the pre-processor for Marc can perform the curve fitting based on the measured data and provides visual and numeric feedback on the accuracy of the fit.

Concrete structures typically contain rebars. Meshing these in detail would result in impossibly large models. To make matters worse, changing the rebar layout requires a complete re-meshing operation. March has special rebar elements where you simply need to specify the location, amount and direction of the rebar layers which are added into the parent material (the concrete in this example). Changing the amount of rebars to use simply requires changing a number in the rebar material property. Adding a layer of rebars? Edit the rebar material, add the layer, and then specify the additional rebars' location, amount and orientation for the new layer.

Ever looked at the cross-section of a tire? There are multiple different types of rubber and often regions with a steel mesh, nylon cloth and steal beads. The same rebar element method allows modelling a tire with a lot less elements than detailed modelling would require, with very little impact on the accuracy. An additional method is available in Marc where elements can be “inserted” into others without requiring the meshes for the rebars and the rubber to match. This allows moving these inserted layers without having to recreate the complete mesh.

More functionality in Marc is available such as adding or removing materials during the analysis. This can be used to model additive manufacturing processes, welding, machining, or modelling the process of building a dam wall.

But there are other interesting interactions in nonlinear analysis as well. What would happen to a structure that can contact another while applying heating to one of them? The contact state between the components determines how the heat flows between them, while the temperature distribution combined with thermal expansion changes the contact state. This requires simultaneous solution of the thermal and structural physics. This is available in Marc.

What if the heat input was caused by electrical current flowing? The current flowing impacts the thermal solution, the temperatures impact the structural solution and the structural response impacts the flow of electricity and heat. This can also be performed in Marc.

Temperature

Voltage

Density

There are a lot more interesting additions available in Marc to allow complex nonlinear problems to be solved.

By this point it should be obvious that supporting all the nonlinear effects that can occur in structures is the bare minimum required to solve some nonlinear structural problems. Solving generic nonlinear problems often requires additional capabilities that complement the nonlinear capabilities.

This is where Marc shines: If it can be solved using FEA at all, chances are that it can be solved with Marc.

Deciphering Neural Networks: Lessons from 3Blue1Brown's 'Deep Learning' Series

Our latest newsletter feature takes inspiration from the educational and visually engaging 'Deep Learning' series by 3Blue1Brown. In this chapter, we delve into the heart of neural networks, exploring the captivating concept of gradient descent and how it drives the learning process. Join us as we unravel the 'Art of Engineering' behind neural networks, gaining insights from this insightful video by 3Blue1Brown. Get ready to enhance your understanding of neural networks and machine learning through the lens of one of the most renowned educational channels on YouTube, and if you don't want to implement this yourself, use Odyssee CAE which packaged Machine Learning for you.

View it Here

CAEfatigue 2023.1.1

CAEfatigue 2023.1.1 is now available at the Software Download Center.

This patch release addresses several user reported bugs that were found in the previous release, including:

Solver related:

LS-Dyna models with unsupported element types causes the solver to freeze.
.mnf result file with strain gauge stops if location is set to nodav (Nodal average).
vftgseq_scale is not taken into consideration when used together with mutli-axial assessment and without FOS (Factor Of Safety).
Time domain fatigue with Ansys result files with Center location and hotspots does not work.
Using .mnf results with 3d critical plane fails if number steps and angles are very large (>2B).

User Interface related:

Digimat, FKM and Cyclic properties are not getting saved in the cfmodel.
Loading an RSP file results in inaccurately labeled channel titles.
Strain Gauge normal calculation didn’t take all surface normals into account.
Not possible to access ODB results when in control file view.
If a custom legend range has been set when viewing corner or average nodal results and the range is very large (> 1e18), the colors will be displayed incorrectly.
LMTRANS job in process flow using Abaqus result files writes out wrong external loadcase IDs.

We recommend upgrading to this version.

As a further reminder, some main highlights recently introduced with 2023.1 included

New Histogram of Rain flow Cycle Counting:

- DISPLAY HISTOGRAM: CAEfatigue introduces a powerful time domain Rainflow Cycle Counting (RCC) feature, enabling 3D plot visualization of arbitrary time histories.
- DISPLAY TIME-HISTORY: Combine any 3D RCC plot with its corresponding peak valley time history to identify the most damaging cycles as range pairs.

New Virtual Strain Gauge capability:

- Strain Gauge correlation: Enables a direct correlation between measured strain histories obtained from resistance strain gauges and predicted strain histories from finite element models.
- Simulated strain gauges are accurately applied to the surface of the FE model, mirroring the positions of real strain gauges on the physical component. Simply click and drag to move and rotate the virtual strain gauge as needed.

New DSP Calculator for Digital Signal Processing:

- Advanced Time History Manipulation: Utilize the intuitive calculator-type interface of DSP to manipulate time histories.
- Channel Modification and Export: Easily modify individual or multiple time signal channels loaded from an input file, and export the modified data into a new file.

Solver and GUI enhancements

- Extended Nastran H5 support (Sol400 transient, SDISP, multiple H5 in SOL101 and relative response calculation)
- Option for smaller CSV output and capability to filter output columns in H3D writer
- Improved GUI for NEF (NEFGUI) with ease of use, integration and postprocessing.
- Clipping Planes with 3D results visualization for solid elements.

Click here to learn about What’s New in CAEfatigue 2023.1.1.

Dytran 2023.1

Dytran 2023.1 is now available at the Software Download Center.

Click here to learn about What’s New in Dytran 2023.1.

Some main highlights of this release include:

Tied contact with offset: Tied contact is widely employed for composite simulation. While currently supported by Dytran, its application has been restricted to cases with minor gaps with solid elements. In this new release, the tied contact is enhanced for models with significant offsets including shell elements.
Failure of tied contact: To simulate the delamination of composite shells, the failure option in tied contact is implemented in this release. After the failure of tied contact, regular node-to-surface contact will be applied. Also, a new output request is available to monitor the stresses and failure of the tied contact.
Bug fixes: Several defects have been fixed in this release.

Easy5 2023.2

Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence is pleased to announce the launch of Easy5 2023.2. There are some changes that require your attention and some new features that may interest you:

Runtime Licensing for Easy5 Analyses has been restored to the Easy5 2010 state:

Analysis with any standalone executable or shared object requires availability and checkout of the EASY5_RT_Analysis license feature.
Analysis with exported FMUs, Simulink S-functions or exported DLLs requires the availability and checkout of the EASY5_RT_MATLAB_Interface license feature.
Analysis with any standalone executable or shared object containing Gas Dynamics (GD) library components requires the availability and checkout of the EASY5_RT_Gas_Dynamics license feature.
Analysis with any standalone executable or shared object containing Thermal Hydraulics (HC) library components requires availability and checkout of the EASY5_RT_Hydraulic_Adv license feature.
Analysis with any standalone executable or shared object containing Basic Hydraulics library (HB) components requires availability and checkout of the EASY5_RT_Hydraulic_Basic license feature.
Analysis with any standalone executable or shared object containing Multiphase Fluid library (VC) components requires availability and checkout of the EASY5_RT_Multiphase_Fluid license feature.

Also, during the process of exporting an FMU, a standalone single-call analysis of the model being exported is performed. Hence, the above RT license feature prerequisites are also required (briefly) during the process of FMU Export- the EASY5_RT_Analysis feature for all models and the appropriate library RT license features listed above if the model being exported contains GD, HC, HB or VC library components.

What's New in Easy5 2023.2

External Heat Transfer to Thermal Hydraulics Pipe Walls

A new component IN, Pipe Insulation and Heat Transfer to Ambient, has been added. This component makes ported connections to pipe walls and can be used to model heat transfer in the environment.

Coming Soon…

Updates have been made to Easy5 to support authoring of Easy5 models from the UI of Elements 2023.2. A user will be able to access Easy5 libraries to create an Easy5 model as a sub-system inside an Elements model.

Easy5 2023.2 is now available at the Software Download Center.

Click here to learn about What’s New in Easy5 2023.2.

FormingSuite 2023.3

FormingSuite 2023.3 is now available at the Software Download Center.

Click here to learn about What’s New in FormingSuite 2023.3.

Some of the FTI FormingSuite 2023.3 highlights include the following:

Introduced display of minimum deviation

What is it? A new result plot comparing the calculated springback geometry to the nominal or target part.
What is in it for you? This allows for visualization of the springback geometry compared to the target geometry and allows for more realistic process planning.

ARC/LS-Dyna file export

What is it? ARC and MOD files including stresses can be exported from the springback workbench.
What is in it for you? CAE results can be exported for use in downstream simulations.

Hole creation to intermediate geometry

What is it? Added a new function for hole creation to intermediate geometry.
What is in it for you? Improves accuracy for process planning and costing by improving the users’ ability to model the true manufacturing process.

User Experience Improvements

What is it? The user experience improvements include improvements to all report generation, improved display and table header interaction in cost breakdown in the summary table, performance improvements in the solvers (MUMPS) and the summary table, and the ladder layout is now fully connected with process planning, allowing complete cost studies.
What is in it for you? These user experience enhancements help obtain results faster and easier than ever.

Simufact 2023.3

Simufact Additive 2023.3 is now available at the Software Download Center.

Look forward to the new highlights of Simufact Additive 2023.3, which include:

Live setter generation– during sintering of metal binder jetting objects, parts are in a malleable form and require live setters to support the parts from below to prevent sagging and other deformations. For parts that require support during sintering, users can now try out different setter designs by selecting and extruding faces of the part for a much more comfortable and highly adaptive process of setter generation.
One step machining– in contrast to the previous machining function, where the user needs to import different volumes, one step machining has just one simple machining stage with no machining volumes requirement – the machining is directly calculated within Simufact Additive! This makes this workflow much faster and increases the usability.
Brief descriptions – Simufact Additive now has Brief Descriptions for embedded dialogs. Embedded dialogs like Nesting, Geometry defects etc. will show Brief descriptions below the dialog describing every parameter better. These descriptions pop up once the user hovers on a specific parameter in the dialog – increasing the usability and providing directly accessible knowledge of the given parameters for better simulation results.
Further improvements are

- Supports/setters can be translated along with parts
- Model check for part contact gap above layer thickness
- Various further improvements to the solver and for an enhanced user experience that make the simulation more efficient and stable overall.

Visit the SimCompanion website to discover all the great new enhancements in Simufact Additive 2023.3.

Upgrade to Simufact Additive 2023.3 and benefit from the new features that improve your daily work!

We are pleased to inform you about the new software release Simufact Forming 2023.3, that is now available at the Software Download Center.

Look forward to the new highlights which include:

New GUI automation capabilities through Python scripting – Simufact Forming now offers GUI automation using Python scripting, making simulations and process adjustments effortless. Python controls the GUI seamlessly, reducing user interaction. This feature benefits all users, streamlining automation, saving time, and preventing errors with comprehensive documentation and prebuilt scripts. Elevate your simulation workflow with Simufact Forming's Python-driven automation.

Thickness based 3D cutting – Experience 3D cutting with Simufact Forming's latest feature, perfect for precision cutting and scenarios where material removal is minimal compared to thickness. This intuitive tool simplifies cutting operations, allowing you to utilise the resulting geometry in subsequent simulations. Enhance your cutting processes with ease.

New (optional) solver pinning method (FE Solver) – This method pins the solver to a single CPU core, potentially boosting performance by up to 20%, though results may vary based on your project and hardware. Note that it can interact with other pinning methods, especially in cluster environments. Harness this cutting-edge solver pinning for remarkable simulation optimisation and performance gains.
Modernised user interfaces for a better user experience – Experience Simufact Forming's enhanced user interface with a modernised, user-centric design in our latest update. The main menu has been revamped, utilising cutting-edge programming languages to enable future visual improvements, including 4K support. We've also introduced a new project management system for streamlined workflow, and you'll notice a cleaner, more intuitive interface with the removal of toolbars. Elevate your Simufact Forming experience with these updates, ensuring a seamless and efficient user journey.

Visit the SimCompanion website to discover all the great new enhancements in Simufact Forming 2023.3.

Upgrade to Simufact Forming 2023.3 and benefit from the new features that improve your daily work!

Simufact Welding 2023.3 is now available at the Software Download Center.

Click here to learn about What’s New in Simufact Welding 2023.3.

Some of the Simufact Welding 2023.3 highlights include the following:

Geometry Boundary Conditions

What is it? Simplified spot models can now use geometry boundary conditions, such as bearings, fixed geometries, or clamping.
What is in it for you? The updated boundary conditions give users added flexibility and ease to set up the welding simulation more accurately and quickly, which enables users to set up a representative model of their process.

Spot-wise remeshing capabilities for all RSW modes

What is it? For all RSW models, when calling the ‘Mesh’ function, a new, minimalistic meshing tool is open end that allows meshing components based on the position of weld spots.
What is in it for you? Allows users to easily generate and/or refine the mesh within Simufact Welding without any prior knowledge of meshing.

Enhanced Morphing Tool

What is it? The best-fit function can now better cope with incomplete meshes such as one-sided 2D scans. Morphing of 2D shell meshes now also correctly adds the correct 2D shell geometry type to the object catalog.
What is in it for you? These enhancements will improve the robustness of the morphing tool, making it easier for users to handle the data that they have.

New ‘solver pinning’ option

What is it? New, MARC internal pinning method, that will pin the solver executable to a single CPU core.
What is in it for you? The solver pinning option can improve performance in the right situation.

Updated Material Database

What is it? Updated material database to include three new materials (HSLA-65_sw, DP1200_sw, and DH36_sw).
What is in it for you? An enhanced material database gives users more options to help define their simulation.

Further Improvements

What is it? A new model check will inform the user when the ‘skip short load cases’ options have been triggered. The default temperature scale has been adapted and given an additional grey increment. Python and scripting enhancements include the added possibility to change the min-max value in the color legend via scripting, an already existing run.bat file is no longer overwritten when using the Python command ‘start_analysis()’, and groupings introduced to Python documentation for more overview.
What is in it for you? These further improvements will help the general user experience making it easier and more efficient to set up, run, and evaluate welding simulations.

SIMTEQ Engineering Webinar

Contact and Everything That you Need to Know About it

7 October 2022
11:30 - 12:30

Contact and Everything
That you Need to Know About it

Registration

MSC Apex Tip

MSC Apex Part Replace

did you know... you can replace parts in Apex and automatically transfer its properties and mesh parameters in one simple step?

Be in control of when parts need to be updated and replace them on demand in one simple step.

Moldex3D Webinars

Leveraging Cloud Computing via Moldex3D Cloud Connect

Sep 27 - 10:00 AM

Leveraging Cloud Computing via Moldex3D Cloud Connect

More Information & Registration

Understanding Low Constant Pressure Molding with iMFLUX

Oct 18 - 10:00 AM

Understanding Low Constant Pressure Molding with iMFLUX

More Information & Registration

Training

FEA101 - Finite Element Analysis Fundamentals

Software Package: MSC Apex

Price: R 18 300.00/p excl VAT (A 25% discount applies if attendance is online)

Date: 02 - 06 Oct 2023

Duration: 5 Days

CPD Accredited: Yes

More Information

Registration

STU701 - Structural Mechanics

Price: R 7 320.00/p excl VAT (A 25% discount applies if attendance is online)

Date: 17 - 18 Oct 2023

Duration: 2 Days

CPD Accredited: Yes

More Information

Registration

MAR101&102 - Nonlinear Analysis using Marc and Mentat

Software Package: Marc

Price: R 18 300.00/p excl VAT (A 25% discount applies if attendance is online)

Date: 13 - 17 Nov 2023

Duration: 5 Days

More Information

Registration

STU701 - Structural Mechanics

Price: R 7 320.00/p excl VAT (A 25% discount applies if attendance is online)

Date: 21 - 22 Nov 2023

Duration: 2 Days

CPD Accredited: Yes

More Information

Registration

SIMTEQ Newsletter September 2023

SIMTEQ Engineering Cape Town Tech-Day

RAPDASA 2023