ANSYS and NAI Team Up to Improve Thermal Simulation

By DE Editors

ANSYS, Inc. (Southpointe, PA) and Network Analysis, Inc. (NAI; Chandler, AZ) announced a product that integrates the SINDA/G thermal analyzer into the ANSYS Workbench modeling system, thereby enabling advanced thermal modeling capabilities.

The SINDA/G for ANSYS Workbench plug-in is a transparent integration of SINDA/G into ANSYS Workbench. Of benefit to both beginning thermal modelers and advanced thermal analysts, the integration allows use of advanced thermal features involving convection, surface-to-surface radiation, and orbital heating without needing to know the format of SINDA/G or thermal radiation codes. Experienced SINDA/G users will no longer be limited by simple boundary conditions typically associated with finite element analysis (FEA) thermal codes as they now can experience the power of SINDA/G within the ANSYS Workbench environment.

Mechanical analysis products from ANSYS incorporate a graphical modeling environment suitable for producing SINDA/G thermal models. These models have enhanced the concurrent engineering processes by allowing temperatures computed from advanced SINDA/G models to be used by simulation software from ANSYS for thermal stress/distortion computations. Plus thermal engineers will not need to learn another modeling system.

When the SINDA/G thermal design system is integrated into an FEA modeler such as the ANSYS Workbench platform, the finite element models translate into a SINDA/G network thermal model. SINDA/G is stable and can quickly solve large complex nonlinear thermal models involving temperature-dependent thermal properties, radiation, and orthotropic material properties.

The SINDA/G plug-in has connections to thermal radiation codes such as THERMICA, NEVADA, TRASYS, TSS, and NAI’s fast radiation solver called SINDARad. Now spacecraft thermal models now can be created in the ANSYS Workbench environment, for example, and the orbital thermal environment can be defined by using one of these thermal radiation and orbital heating codes.

For more information about SINDA/G, which is a trademark of Network Analysis, Inc. For further details, go to ANSYS, Inc.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.