What’s New in Simcenter Femap 2022.1

Our Simcenter Femap product development team has been hard at work, so we are pleased to share what’s new in our latest release – Simcenter Femap 2022.1.

New features and enhancements included in the latest release are aimed at helping you:

• Improve representation of real-world conditions when simulating assemblies with moving parts
• Eliminate geometry simplification and manipulation typically needed to create a high-quality solid mesh
• Take advantage of advanced analysis types with improved support for specialized entities
• Streamline workflows with enhanced graphics performance and user interface

Kinematic Joints connect two nodes and allow a certain relationship of relative motion or rotation between the two depending on what type of joint is established. The types of Kinematic joints include revolute, inline, slider, spherical, cylindrical, and other highly specialized types which can be used for the analysis of models containing moving parts, such as aerostructures, helicopters, deployable structures in space, gas turbines, and machine tools. The addition of drive loads as a new load type can be used to enforce displacements or rotations on kinematic joints.

This new capability includes several parameters for customization, including different slider types, driver loads, and additional friction options. The available slider types allow different constraints for relative rotation of the nodes sliding along the track. This includes spherical, prismatic, cylindrical, and universal types. For driver loads, Flexible Sliders can be driven with both external load sets, and forces/displacements applied directly to a specified driver node. For friction, available types include options for validating motion (no friction), infinite friction, and displacement or velocity dependent frictional forces.

How does it work? The hex-dominant mesher first fills a solid volume with as many hexahedral elements as possible, then fills the remainder of the volume with wedge, pyramid, and tetrahedral elements, as needed. This process creates high-quality elements which can be sent directly to the Simcenter Nastran solver with no additional interaction from the user or manual refinement of the mesh.

In addition to being able to mesh single parts, the hex-dominant mesher can work on multiple parts to create a single continuous mesh of the assembly. This new feature includes additional options to control various aspects of mesh sizing, mesh associativity, and whether all elements should be given midside nodes during the meshing process.

Additionally, a Tension-Only Quadrilateral element is now available in Simcenter Nastran Multi-Step Structural Solution Sequence, SOL 401, which has the ability to convert from a shell element to a shear panel element when certain user-specified criteria have been met. Once the conversion has occurred, the element will continue to act as a shear panel for each Sequentially Dependent subcase following an initial Sequentially Independent subcase. It’s also possible to specify a parameter which controls whether tension-only capabilities should be considered for a particular analysis.

Simcenter Femap 2022.1 supports direct access to the Simcenter Nastran Solution Monitor, allowing you to view the results of an analysis and/or review curated output from Simcenter Nastran. This includes information, warning, and error messages recovered directly from Simcenter Nastran while an analysis is running or after upon completion.

Solution Monitor is most helpful when used to monitor Simcenter Nastran Multistep Structural and Multistep Nonlinear Kinematic Solutions Sequences, SOL 401 and SOL 402, which are the default for such analyses.

The Solution Monitor can also be used for other types of analysis by selecting the appropriate option for Solution Monitor when specifying Executive and Solution Options in the Analysis Set Manager.

Solution Monitor provides immense value when using SOL 401 or SOL 402 because it provides vital information, such as the time increment and iterations for each step, convergence criteria, cumulative number of iterations, energy evolution, contact/material status, number of nodes in contact, damaged elements, creep elements, and elements which have experienced plastic deformation.

Knowing this information during a multi-step solve can be used to determine if a solution is properly converging and should be allowed to continue, or if it is diverging and various options or model setup choices should be reevaluated.

You can evaluate the rules for any number of selected groups via the context-sensitive menu for Groups in the Model Info pane. This eliminates the need to use the multi-step process when using the Evaluate command from the Group menu.

Additional entity selection methods for nodes and elements are now available during standard entity selection. New methods for selection of nodes include on Points of Solid, on Curves of Solid, and on Surfaces of Solid. For elements, new methods include All Nodes on Solid, on Points of Solid, on Curves of Solid and on Surfaces of Solid. These new selection methods have been made available to use as rules on the Group menu for Nodes and Elements, respectively.