Finite Element Analysis Software “The focus is on ease of use, so that you don’t have to have
a strong engineering background to make those kinds of deci- sions. You can make these decisions automatically, but really the best place for that to be done is by the engineer,” noted Mitch Muncy, director of engineering, NEi Software (West- minster, CA), developer of NEi Nastran and a Femap reseller. “Where a tool like Femap comes in handy, you’re pretty much trying to destroy the CAD model to come up with the best mathematical model to represent what you’re trying to build— you want the most accurate answer that you can possibly have, so when you go and test a product, it’s going to behave exactly how you had predicted it.”
Robust Design and Topology Optimization
Some leading FE software developers offer tools for robust design and topology optimization that allow running many more simulations than previously done. “Back a decade or two ago, people created a nominal design, with the basic
design dimensions, then analyzed that design,” Meintjes said. “Today, people are looking at variation and tolerancing, manu- facturing capability, material properties and thicknesses, and doing robust design by analyzing random variations of these things that do vary, due to manufacturing, to come up with designs that aren't sensitive to manufacturing parameters.” With topology optimization, software like Altair's Hyper-
Works OptiStruct can take a volume, analyze loads and forces the structure needs to carry, and derive an optimum structure to carry those loads, Meintjes noted. “OptiStruct uses FEA, but sort of an inverse of the usual problem, which is give me a design and I’ll tell you if it can carry the load. What OptiStruct says is ‘Give me the loads, and I’ll show you a design that can carry them.’ So the geometry is not an input.”
Improving Simulation Workflow The Simulia Isight and Abaqus software from Dassault Systèmes (Vélizy-Villacoublay, France) enable users to link
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