What’s new in Simcenter Mechanical Simulation 2412

Simcenter Mechanical Solutions Out now!
The Simcenter Mechanical 2412 releases empower our customers to transform their industries. The continued improvement simplifies workflows and better integrates engineering teams. The latest product releases create new ways of working that help simulation engineers share and update data in simulation files.There are many highlights, including the integration of Simcenter Zona into Simcenter 3D. Now you can conduct both subsonic and supersonic analysis in a single environment.
“The updates in Simcenter 3D Solutions 2412 empower engineers to meet the evolving challenges of electrification and advanced air mobility,” said Jean-Claude Ercolanelli, senior vice president, Simulation and Test Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “We’re delivering tools that drive innovation, improve efficiency and support a more sustainable and connected future. Our Simcenter portfolio is transforming engineering simulation.”
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Integrated analysis of Aerostructures
Many aerospace manufacturing companies are facing similar challenges including skills shortages, rising costs, and the need to develop technologies that mitigate the impact aviation has on climate change. To compensate, they are looking for new technologies that reduce the human hours required to complete workflows, remove bottlenecks, and relieve experts of tasks. The following are new tools designed to help the aerospace sector with these challenges.
Margin of safety
Simcenter 3D now helps secure the program certification schedule while removing the cost of maintaining an in-house tool and can accelerate the process by 20 percent – by enabling users to carry out heavy-duty margin of safety calculations for the full aircraft model across the entire flight envelope. Traditional use cases dictate focusing on a few critical cases (due to time constraints) in the flight envelope when conducting a Margin of safety (MoS) analysis – often carried out using expensive in-house tools to perform stress analysis and then scale it for heavy-duty work on limited critical cases, with Simcenter 3D this process is a thing of the past.
Nodal force reports and shear moment diagrams
The complexity of modern aircraft combined with the rigorous process of certification of aerostructures makes new product lead time exceptionally long, therefore, the removal of small but very repetitive tasks is essential to make future projects viable. For example, in the latest Simcenter™ 3D software update, the creation of complex free-body diagrams where nodal force reports and shear-moment diagrams, which are necessary for structural analysis, have been streamlined. This enables engineers to evaluate load paths along an aircraft and compare values between models and iterations.

Design to analysis for axial flux motors
To extend the range of electric vehicles, manufacturers are seeking to optimize the power density of the electric powertrain. Axial flux motors, which are typically one third the size and weight of the radial flux motors used in EVs today, make them a perfect fit. However, engineers lack the software tools to help accurately design and simulate axial flux motors. Siemens enables engineers to explore lightweight analytical axial flux motor designs in seconds using Simcenter™ E-Machine Design software, then explore complex designs and the effects of physical phenomena such as electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical loading with Simcenter 3D in a simple, automatic process.

Shift left for gear design development
The automotive industry’s focus on electrification has placed a greater emphasis on the vehicle’s noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) performance, particularly the gearbox. To combat costly late-stage design changes, Simcenter™ 3D Motion software introduces new capabilities to shift left the design of the gearbox in the development cycle. The new Gear Design Optimization Framework allows drivetrain engineers to balance factors impacting transmission performance, while the parameterization of lightweight gear blanks in the simulation preprocessor speeds up the gear design process.

Extending Smart Virtual Sensing
When performing physical tests, there can be times when it is impossible to attach strain gauges or accelerometers to critical areas of the test specimen due to complex or unreachable geometry. Last year, Siemens introduced Simcenter 3D Smart Virtual Sensing which integrates real-time simulation with physical testing to measure results at these impossible to reach locations. The latest update expands Smart Virtual Sensing capabilities in Simcenter 3D to support rigid body motion smart virtual sensors for understanding movement of components in tightly constrained packaging and the smart virtual damage sensor, providing engineers with insights into damage and the remaining useful lifetime of machines.

Boosting collaboration and simulation efficiency
Simulation is often cited as a bottleneck in the overall development process. Simulation process improvement is at the core of what Simcenter 3D stands for, and this latest release continues to make simulation processes more efficient. For example, the latest update introduces new Collaborative simulation capabilities that efficiently transfer loads and boundary conditions (LBCs) from a finite element (FE) assembly model to the component model. This ultimately helps centralize simulation model data and enables more efficient collaboration between component simulation teams. The voxel mesh-based approach has also been extended to save time during set-up, and with a new non-uniform voxel mesh option, it speeds up simulation run times by a factor of two for powder-bed fusion additive manufacturing.



Voxel-based advanced simulation for additive manufacturing
Voxel meshes were recently introduced, but in this release, they got a major update. Now in the 2412, you can simulate thermo-mechanical problems using voxel meshes. Not only will this save you time but it also helps less experienced users tackle some advanced problems without having to overcome the difficulties that arise when using tetrahedral meshing. Updates also include non-uniform voxel meshes so that it is easier to optimize the model and reduce the required simulation time. Furthermore, thermo-mechanical simulations can have non-uniform temperatures and strains resulting in complex shrinkage, all of which can be simulated with the updated voxel mesh solution.

Improved output for Rotor Dynamics
A critical speeds map is important for turbomachinery design, as it shows the influence of the support characteristics on the critical speeds of the rotating system. Engineers must assess the influence of the bearing stiffness on the critical speeds of the system in an undamped analysis to pass industry standards.
Critical Speeds maps
Comply with API standards by outputting the Critical speeds maps of your gas turbine. Probe for critical speeds and launch a parametric study with Simcenter 3D Design Space Explorer to see the influence of bearing stiffness on the critical speeds of your system.
Newsroom
See the full press release for this product release in the Siemens Newsroom (Available from 20/01/2025)
Downloads
Download the Simcenter 3D trial, or if you are already a customer, get the latest updates.
Existing customers and employees can find out more in our long-format introductory video, via this link: