MSC Announces New Release of Nastran 2012

By Anthony J. Lockwood

MSC Software (Santa Ana, CA) has announced the availability of MSC Nastran version 2012.2. “High-performance computing (HPC) productivity and nonlinear robustness improvements were the focus of this latest release,” according to the company. The company adds the latest version of this FEA (finite element analysis) solver provides engineers with a single solver with which they can perform such multidisciplinary analyses as linear statics, dynamics, and implicit and explicit nonlinear analyses, enabling simulations of both common and complex application problems.

This image depicts the simulation of a multi-compartment side airbag with MSC Nastran 2012.2. Image courtesy of MSC Software.

“MSC Software is delivering major breakthroughs in new physics and high-performance computing in our latest solver technologies to accelerate simulations, reduce design cycle time, and increase productivity for our customers,” said Ted Wertheimer, director,  Solver Product Management, in a press statement.

On the HPC front, MSC Software says that, through a collaboration with Intel, it has enhanced MSC Nastran to take advantage of Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) on Intel’s Sandy Bridge class processors on the Windows operating systems in addition to its support for Linux systems completed earlier this year. Users with this processor can automatically benefit with improved performance as the AVX instruction set is designed to help with numerically intensive applications, the company says.

With MSC Nastran 2012.2, you can predict failures in such nonlinear situations as this fan blade. Image courtesy of MSC Software.

In version 2012.2, MSC Nastran has also been enhanced with a new methodology for contact detection through a new segment-to-segment approach. This, says MSC, improves the fidelity of contact analysis. Other enhancements in this area include implementation of a non-symmetric stiffness matrix for sliding friction and a finite sliding capability for deformable bodies.

MSC Nastran’s nonlinear analysis solution can run analyses in both distributed and shared-memory parallel modes (DMP and SMP,  respectively). This productivity enhancing capability, says the company, is now available to execute nonlinear element stiffness,  stress, and force calculations, providing improved parallel scalability and applicability for a wider range of nonlinear applications. Improved I/O caching is also now implemented to reduce wall time for large engineering models.

This landing gear image demonstrates a behavior study of assemblies. Image courtesy of MSC Software.

Enhancements to MSC Nastran’s explicit solver’s DMP technology are also said to enable users to achieve performance gains for complex FSI (fluid structure interaction) problems. In a testimonial supplied with the press announcement, Mr. Joonyong Heo, manager, Structure Analysis Research Team of Hankook Tire, said that “to predict the tire performance on wet surface conditions … we used MSC Nastran 2012.2 to run a tire model with approximately 2 million elements in a DMP environment with multiple cores. The performance improvements of the explicit solver in MSC Nastran 2012.2 were impressive with more than 3X performance improvement.”

The MSC Nastran 2012.2 release is available for current subscribers for immediate download through the MSC Software Solutions Download Center. For more information on MSC Nastran, visit MSC Software.

Download a brochure on what’s new in MSC Nastran 2012.2.

Download the MSC Nastran brochure.

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Downloadthe MSC Nastrandatasheet.

Downloadthe Advanced Nonlineardatasheet.

Downloadthe Composites datasheet.

Download the Optimization datasheet.

Contact MSC Software to arrange a demo of MSC Nastran 2012.2.

See why DE’s editors selected MSC Nastran 2012.2 as their Pick of the Week.

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