Using the newly released Ansys 16.2, engineers can now create virtual prototypes of complete systems, enabling them to make strides in innovation and unleash next-generation products within their industries.
As products - from automobiles to smartphones to wearable technology - become more complex and development times continue to shrink, the need to simulate whole systems grows.
Through simulation, engineers can take full advantage of the growing number of opportunities presented by the rapid innovation of materials, electronics and processes. While some manufacturers have optimized the design of components or smaller sub-systems, until today's Ansys release, no comprehensive solution has existed for simulating complete systems. The complexity within systems arises from the challenges of connecting the individual pieces to ensure they work together as designed. By developing complete virtual prototypes, leading companies can jump-start their innovation and leapfrog the competition.
"Ansys customers are already solving component and sub-system problems using the most advanced software available. But with today's release of Ansys 16.2, they expand to the system level," said Jim Cashman, Ansys president and CEO. "We're offering engineers the most advanced engineering solution technologies on the market to predict real-world product performance using accurate, fast and reliable simulation. By leveraging these new capabilities, enterprises will gain competitive advantage in a competitive market."
"Understanding how the whole system works is critical to developing an optimized design in minimal time," said Jim Shaikh, founder of yoomi, which creates self-warming baby bottle products. "We perform a series of design studies using the simulation software and utilize the results to build a simpler analytical model to crunch through thousands of possible geometric alternatives."
Part of this new simulation approach is made possible by enhancements to Ansys Simplorer, a comprehensive platform for multidisciplinary systems modeling. In this new release, Simplorer can now assemble and simulate electrical, electronic, thermo-fluid, mechanical and embedded software components. The methodology offers advanced 3-D precision when needed, as well as reduced-order modeling for verifying multi-domain system performance interaction.
"The systems enhancements made in Ansys 16.2 will elevate our product development process with its new 3-D simulation capabilities," said Steve Franceschini, director of engineering at Meggitt OECO, which develops power generation and conversion products. "With the ability to virtually build, test and validate our prototypes with Ansys 16.2, we will have the ability to further innovate our reliable products faster."
Ansys 16.2 offers significant advancements in systems engineering through Ansys AIM, the first integrated and comprehensive multiphysics simulation environment designed for engineers, which was introduced earlier this year. AIM has rapidly developed and Ansys 16.2 represents its next step forward. Among the many new multiphysics and systems capabilities are heat transfer and thermal-stress, gas flows, and structural deformation and stress.
Optimizing heat transfer and thermal-stress is a critical design issue for many types of industry applications, such as heat exchangers, thermal mixing valves, engine components and electronic devices. In such applications, an accurate prediction of the temperature and heat transfer in both the fluid and solid regions is essential to accurately predict the thermal and thermal-stress performance of the design. AIM now includes new features to support a comprehensive conjugate heat transfer analysis and one-way fluid-structure interaction to compute thermal-stress.
