Editor’s Pick: ANSYS 14.0 Automates Time-Intensive Operations

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

ANSYS has introduced version 14.0 of its range of engineering simulation solutions. As with recent releases of ANSYS, 14.0 has a ton of stuff going on in every capability area. That means choosing one or a handful of new functionalities does not do the depth of ANSYS 14.0 justice, but that’s not going to deter me from mentioning a couple of cool things.

With that said, a theme throughout ANSYS 14.0 is enabling engineers to innovate. On its website, ANSYS outlines what it’s doing this way: Amplifying engineering, simulating complex systems, and driving innovation with HPC (high-performance computing). That boils down to ease of use and increased productivity.

In its broadest sense, “amplifying engineering” refers to ANSYS Workbench—the platform that creates an ecosystem for customized simulation workflows, automatic parametric evaluations, integrated physics, and data sharing between applications. But it also means leveraging your engineering time by automating much of the grunt work—say, meshing and simulation data management. Example: the ANSYS assembly meshing tool extracts fluid volume from CAD assemblies then automatically creates structured or unstructured meshes depending on your needs. In 14.0, the automated algorithms and weighting options for data import are enhanced, giving you finer control over what you’re doing.

“Simulating complex systems” means coupled physics analyses—structural, fluid dynamics, electromechanics, CFD, and system interactions, for example—so that you can predict the behavior of components and systems in conditions mimicking the real world. ANSYS 14.0 launches two-way electromagnetic coupling with stress analysis and the ability to re-simulate the electromagnetic field distribution on deformed geometry. And there’s a new co-simulation link between ANSYS Fluent, the flow, turbulence, heat transfer, and reaction modeler, and Simplorer, the mechatronic and multi-domain system design solution. This means you can, say, analyze battery systems while taking into consideration the nonlinear behavior of the fluid system.

HPC gets a lot of attention in ANSYS 14.0. You’ll find “smart” solver management, such as architecture-aware partitioning, that evenly sizes and distributes jobs to compute processors efficiently. ANSYS Mechanical 14.0 lets you leverage the newest GPUs and minimize the I/O for post-processing. New transient blade row methods in ANSYS CFD 14.0 speed compressor and turbine simulations. And new time- and memory-efficient HPC techniques in ANSYS HFSS 14.0 model finite-sized antenna arrays explicitly and include finite-size edge effects.

In the end, your takeaway is that it appears ANSYS 14.0 offers enhancements, upgrades, and new capabilities across its entire reach. Your best bet is to hit the link at the end of today’s Pick of the Week write-up and hone in on your engineering area of interest to learn what you need to know.

Thanks, pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

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