FEA software adds general contact feature

Abaqus Version 6.3 includes new abilities in linear and dynamics applications, including faster definition of contact models. There are over 80 headline improvements.

Version 6.3 of the Abaqus product suite will begin shipping to customers in September.

With this new release of Abaqus, Hibbitt, Karlsson and Sorensen extends its market-leading FEA technology for solving the most sophisticated problems in nonlinear analysis and offers comprehensive new tools for advanced linear and dynamics applications, as well as finite element modelling and postprocessing.

Abaqus is used by product development and research organisations worldwide to simulate and improve the performance of components, materials and products subject to environmental and operational loading conditions.

More than 80 major enhancements include general contact and spot welds; a highly efficient method for solving multiple load cases; extended parallel processing for faster computing; additional capabilities in inertia relief; and usability improvements such as direct CAD import and a virtual topology feature for idealising finite element models from complex geometry.

Together, these improvements will help make Abaqus customers more productive in every stage of engineering analysis.

"We have developed Abaqus 6.3 in close collaboration with major customers", said Marc Schrank, director of product management for HKS.

"This release continues to advance Abaqus as the leading software for nonlinear FEA.

These industry-leading nonlinear analysis capabilities, combined with new capabilities for linear and dynamics applications, offer users an unprecedented range of analysis power".

Abaqus/Explicit is a leading system for accurately solving transient dynamic analyses, such as those involving drop-test and impact simulations.

The new general contact feature is a notable aspect of Version 6.3.

General contact facilitates quick and accurate definition of contact models, eliminating the traditional, time-consuming manual methods analysts have used to define individual contact surfaces.

One important application of general contact technology, among many, is impact simulation of complex assemblies typically found in consumer electronics such as cell phones or digital cameras.

The general contact capability allows the simulation of complex contact interactions that were difficult to solve efficiently in the past.

"A robust general contact capability makes Abaqus/Explicit a powerful impact simulation solution for many of our safety applications", commented Dr Alois Starlinger, head of structural analysis and testing at Alcan Mass Transportation Systems in Zurich, Switzerland.

"We tested a pre-release version of Abaqus 6.3 to examine complex contact interaction and large deformations in a rail-car crush zone.

The new general contact feature greatly simplified model preparation, and simulation results agreed very well with corresponding tests.

Additionally, Abaqus 6.3 improved the solution time for our contact problems by at least 20%".

Peak computing performance is required to solve the increasingly large models used to analyse complex mechanical systems.

A new domain-level parallelisation approach in Abaqus/Explicit, along with extended parallelisation of the sparse and Lanczos solvers in Abaqus/Standard, deliver impressive performance gains for large models.

A significant objective in the development of Version 6.3 was to improve the tools in Abaqus/Standard for advanced linear applications such as those involving airframes and launch vehicles.

The new software provides a competitive new approach to solving multiple discrete load cases quickly - in some cases, more than 10 times as fast as before.

"Efficiently solving increasingly larger models is a crucial requirement to support our math-based strategy", commented John Givens, director of synthesis and analysis for General Motors, Powertrain.

"We are pleased with HKS's commitment to enhancing our productivity with increased solver performance, powertrain-specific functionality, and analysis process automation", added Jim Day, the group leader for GM Powertrain sealing analysis.

Other major enhancements to Abaqus/Standard include new cylindrical elements and concrete damage models, new material models to support high temperature fatigue assessment, significantly expanded submodelling, support for complex underwater shock analysis and new inertia relief capabilities.

Inertia relief enables analysis of the forces acting on a quasi-static body, such as an aircraft in flight.

The Nastran-import capability in Abaqus has been further upgraded to provide support for Nastran-specific inertia relief setup.

The Abaqus/CAE finite-element modelling environment is improved in Version 6.3.

Along with expanded capabilities for native geometry creation, the software now offers direct import of native geometry from a number of CAD systems, including Catia, I-DEAS, Pro/Engineer, Unigraphics and all other systems that export Parasolid-based models.

New virtual topology tools allow insignificant details in complex CAD geometry to be eliminated by combining model faces and surfaces automatically or semi-automatically to provide an effective model for meshing.

(Updated by CR, May 2007).

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