ThermoAnalytics Updates Thermal Simulation Suite

By DE Editors

ThermoAnalytics has released RadTherm, RadThermIR,  MuSES, and WinTherm version 10.4.

Thermal simulation of layered anisotropic composites (e.g., carbon fiber) is now possible with the new release by defining a preferred direction for each material layer within a composite layup. The user can define a primary preferred direction for the top layer with angular offsets for each layer below. The offset is relative to the primary preferred direction, making it easy to redefine the overall direction of the layup while maintaining the composite structure, the company says.

The design of battery packaging and cooling systems can now be optimized with high-resolution models using the NTG Equivalent Circuit Battery Model. This model treats each cell as a simplified electrical circuit with power spatially distributed as an average value. The increased resolution also permits rapid evaluation and refinement of pack- and vehicle-level cooling system designs.

The new CFD Manager stores details about the source of imported CFD files, including time/date of import, and the settings that were used during the import process. The imported CFD records can be duplicated or deleted and the user can modify the assigned simulation time step or export the CFD settings file.

There have been several enhancements to the thermal reporting feature,  including the ability to include animations within the thermal report;  the animations will render off-screen for Windows and Linux systems. An Annotations Tab has been developed for highlighting the maximum and minimum temperatures and heat rate values. Lastly, a new option has been added to export results in either ASCII or CSV format.

Face-to-face and generic thermal links can both be imported or exported from a CSV file. Generic links can now be visualized in the graphics window.

If a model uses Seed Steady State Solution as the initialization method, the solution will automatically self-seed using the results of a prior analysis. If no results are present, the default initial temperatures will be used for initialization. The solver will also automatically use average part temperatures when seeding from a model having a different number of thermal nodes.

A new option has been added to CFD Import to read flow velocity data from a Patran Neutral file, instead of heat transfer coefficients and fluid temperatures. The flow velocity magnitudes and directions can be visualized on the model within the graphics window. Flow velocity data will be imported to the Library Convection model on an element level,  and will be used to compute local heat transfer coefficients which will be dynamically calculated based on the wall temperature and fluid temperature.

For more information, visit ThermoAnalytics.

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