ANSYS 14.0 provides a great number of new and advanced features that deliver solutions for customers to amplify engineering, simulate their most complex engineered products, and drive innovation with high-performance computing (HPC).

The many new features in ANSYS 14.0 deliver additional physics depth and breadth that can be scaled to meet the changing needs of customers. The advances have been developed with guidance from our most innovative customers, delivering a comprehensive solution for Simulation Driven Product Development™.

CAD Meshing Automation

CAD models often contain many parts, gaps or contact between parts. The larger the number of parts, contacts and gaps, the dirtier the geometry is. CFD engineers are responsible for cleaning geometry from a CAD file to extract the fluid volume and create the mesh: This is often cumbersome and time consuming. In ANSYS 14.0, the assembly meshing tool automatically extracts the fluid volume from CAD assemblies. Furthermore, it automatically creates either cut-cell structured Cartesian meshes (hexahedral mesh elements) or unstructured tetrahedral meshes (cut-tet), depending on user goals and preferences.

The cut-cell technique provides a smaller number of cells and is ideal when high-quality cells are required away from walls or boundaries. The cut-tet technique is ideal when high-quality mesh elements are required in regions close to walls. Inflation layers are supported for both meshing techniques to allow accurate resolution of regions of large gradients (for example, shear layers and boundary layers). Using the assembly meshing tool, users who once spent a considerable amount of time on analysis pre-processing - geometry cleaning, fluid volume extraction and volume decomposition to create hexa/tetrahedral hybrid meshes - can now get meshes of high quality in an automated, robust and fast manner.

ANSYS Workbench Meshing automatically extracts and meshes the fluid volume from complex CAD assemblies. This example shows a cut-cell hexahedral mesh; you also can create tetrahedral meshes. For both approaches, inflation layers to resolve near-wall flows are supported.

Workflow Performance & Usability

Simulating a single operating condition provides performance information, but engineers gain more design insight by simulating the entire performance envelope. ANSYS Workbench provides a framework for design exploration and optimization by enabling parametric modeling of geometric configurations, mesh controls, material properties, and operating conditions, leading to an automated simulation process. ANSYS 14.0 allows design point updates to be submitted for simultaneous execution via the remote solve manager (RSM), including cluster computing environments.

Geometry Modeling and Interoperability for Simulation

Modeling operations in ANSYS DesignModeler now directly accept geometry entities (like faces, edges, vertices, etc.), in addition to supporting named selections and sketches. In ANSYS 14.0, all features and tools are available for customization and exposure via the toolbars to help users customize the interface with frequently used features along with tools for easy and direct access. Several hot keys have been added for frequently repeated operations to reduce the number of steps for a given task. Other related improvements in ANSYS 14.0 include automatic freeze during slice, better error handling, easy toggle between single and box select options, and visualization controls for edge direction and vertices to identify and fix topological issues.

Parametric Modeling and Design Optimization

The adjoint solver of ANSYS Fluent allows engineers to compute the derivative of engineering quantities of interest (such as drag, lift and pressure drop) with respect to the shape of the geometry and other design parameters. This provides guidance on how best to modify the design to achieve an improvement in performance and robustness. It also provides a rapid quantitative estimate of the improvement that can be expected for an extensive range of design-change scenarios. The power of adjoint technology is the ability to gain far more insight using a single simulation than previously possible. Tight integration with ANSYS Fluent ensures that reliable and consistent design sensitivities are computed.

The adjoint solver indicates what portion of the geometry to modify and how to modify it to obtain the optimized down-force on this Formula One design.

MAPDL/ANSYS Workbench Integration

ANSYS 14.0 introduces a number of features that allow the user to control various components of the finite element model within the mechanical environment. All connections such as constraint equations, spiders or weak springs can now be visualized. Users can create selections of nodes using selection logic. For example, these selections can be used to apply loads and boundary conditions that can be modified during restart operations.

A user can create named selections of nodes using selection logic similar. For example, a group of nodes in a spherical or box volume can be selected independently of the underlying geometry.

Composites

Simulation of composites structures brings additional challenges, such as the definition of hundreds or thousands of plies on a structure, including various orientations, or ply-by-ply analysis of the structure's potential failure. A dedicated tool such as ANSYS Composite PrepPost provides significant ease of use for such models. Release 14.0 tightly integrates ANSYS Composite PrepPost with other simulation in ANSYS Workbench. Release 14.0 provides specific modeling techniques for analysis of composites failure such as progressive failure.

Courtesy TU Chemnitz and GHOST Bikes GmbH.

ANSYS Composite PrepPost is part of the project page and streamlines data exchange with implicit or explicit solutions. The bicycle example is computed using the implicit solver, while the baseball bat is solved with an explicit simulation.

External Data Mapping

When results are to be shared between physics, standard practice is to import data, such as pressure fields, temperatures or heat exchange coefficients, from external files. Automated algorithms provide a very efficient tool to project the data from one mesh to another. However, some problems can arise in cases of misalignment between the original data and the current mesh, or when the initial data is too scarce. The capabilities introduced at ANSYS release 13.0 have been enhanced to provide users with additional control and correction capabilities in ANSYS 14.0.

Import of a temperature field on a blade: actual temperature field (left); results form one validation tool that assesses quality of interpolated data (right)

Turbomachinery

ANSYS 14.0 introduces the ability to identify critical speeds of single-spool systems with Campbell plots for solid and line bodies within ANSYS Mechanical, therefore allowing Workbench users to take advantage of solver technology in an efficient way.

Geometries can be automatically created using a simple text file definition, as used in preliminary design.

Campbell diagrams in ANSYS Mechanical diagram shows the variation of the modes of the structure with the velocity and critical speeds are identified as well as the stability of each mode.

Beams & Shells

ANSYS Mechanical introduces the ability for a user to toggle between pipe and beam formulation of line bodies; it also offers the ability to define pipe-specific loads and results. ANSYS 14.0 supports the latest generation of pipe elements available from the MAPDL solver.

Users can import non-uniform thickness fields in the form of tabulated data using the external data capability. This enables direct import of bodies with variable shell thickness from simulation programs, such as ANSYS Polyflow, and the simulation of complex events, such as a plastic bottle drop test with variable thickness being dropped when filled with a liquid.

Mesh connections: while the geometry (left) consists of disconnected surfaces, the mesh is fully connected - without requiring merging the geometry.

Mesh connections have been enhanced to allow users to merge nodes between adjacent faces without requiring geometric changes, to ensure that shared edges are available in the geometric model. This capability enhances the robustness and efficiency of meshing large shell models.

Robust Explicit Solutions

Nodal-based strain (NBS) tet eliminates numerically difficulties encountered in the past: When using tet elements in applications that undergo shear, it result in elements locking. Hex elements are best suited for use with explicit dynamics. However, complex geometries can be difficult or impossible to mesh with hex elements. The average nodal pressure (ANP) tet, implemented about a decade ago in ANSYS Explicit Dynamics, solves the difficulties of volume locking but not shear locking. Available with ANSYS 14.0, the NBS tet element enables running problems with shear loadings with highly accurate solutions.

The new tetrahedral element helps quickly model complex geometries while preserving solution accuracy.

ANSYS HFSS for ECAD

With the new Ansoft Designer links capability, engineers can create fully solvable ANSYS HFSS models while working in any Cadence layout tool (Allegro, Virtuoso and SiP). Thus, an engineer no longer needs to be expert at using  HFSS, since all the modeling steps are automated and can be done while in the Cadence environment.

For non-Cadence users, it is possible to use the ODB format and bring layouts directly into Designer. Once in Designer, the user can work in our layout editor and very easily and quickly make changes to the imported layout or automatically assign excitations and solve the imported structure using the HFSS Solver on Demand capability.

ANSYS SIwave Accuracy & Usability Enhancements

ANSYS SIwave introduces significant improvements in the calculation of vias and their associated structures. Enhancements include characterization of arbitrary anti-pad shapes and, in certain instances, coupled models for vias that are in close proximity. There is also an improved method to handle unreferenced signal traces during simulation.

ANSYS SIwave includes the capability to run HSPICE or ANSYS Nexxim transient simulations directly from within SIwave. Once a simulation is finished, the engineer can simulate and plot time-domain waveforms for signal nets directly from within the SIwave tool.

3-D IC Packages

IC package manufacturers have continued to evolve more complex packaging technologies, such as system-on-chip, stacked die, and multi-chip modules, in an effort to maintain continually increasing chip performance. Three-dimensional packages such as a stacked die, in which multiple dies are stacked vertically in the same package, have unique thermal requirements. Three-dimensional structures don't spread heat evenly throughout the chip, which creates local hot spots. With ANSYS Icepak 14.0, engineers can simulate thermal response of 3-D stacked dies and package-on-package configurations.

Fluid streamlines and temperature contours for a 1U network server; multi-level hex-dominant mesh accurately represents the complex geometry.

Electronics Cooling Workflow & Usability

ANSYS Icepak 14.0 contains a new graphical user interface with new icons, redesigned menus and dialog boxes, expanded right-click functionality, enhanced graphics, and many additional productivity enhancements. Improvements to ANSYS DesignModeler enable engineers to rapidly simplify and create Icepak objects from mechanical CAD data. New variables in ANSYS CFD-Post (thermal chokepoint and thermal cross) allow engineers to identify areas with high thermal resistances and possible regions for a new heat flow path.

New modern and user-friendly ANSYS Icepak user Interface

ANSYS EKM Product Installation & Setup

ANSYS EKM 14.0 brings new capabilities with important changes to simplify installation and licensing with EKM Individual and EKM Shared Products.

A scalable solution, EKM supports single users and shared configurations with a flexible and simple licensing model. It allows for connections to local or remote repositories, encouraging CAE collaboration across dispersed teams.

ANSYS EKM Productivity Enhancements

Integration with ANSYS Workbench allows saving current Workbench projects directly to a selected EKM repository as well as searching for a Workbench project and opening it from a selected repository. Tighter integration with Workbench facilitates collaboration with ongoing projects and allows multiple users to leverage the work that is being done by colleagues. There are numerous usability enhancements for search and audit trail that foster increased productivity.

You can open and save ANSYS Workbench projects directly in EKM, which facilitates updating the local copy and versioning on current projects. Our technology enables multiple users to leverage the work that colleagues perform as well. The tool extracts project-level meta-data to automatically generate an extensive Workbench project report that summarizes component systems and all related aspects. You can use data to display, identify, search and re-use archived Workbench projects.