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Noran Engineering, Inc. in the Media
February
issue of NASA Tech Briefs Featured NEiFusion
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NASA
Tech Briefs magazine provided a great cover opportunity to
present NEiFusion to their audience of design engineers. NEiFusion,
finite element analysis software couples 3D parametric CAD
for model creation with Nastran solvers for solution generation.
To illustrate the capabilities, they chose an image from the
analysis of stresses on a servo motor arm induced during in-flight
loading. The solver used for this model was NEi
Nastran v9. The servo was a 14-part assembly and was
meshed with 128,463 nodes, 411,639 degrees of freedom, and
joined together using NEi Nastran’s
automatic surface contact generation. |
Noran
Engineering, Inc. and UGS Expand Partnership
In
December, Noran Engineering, Inc. (NEi) announced that it is entering
into an expanded partnership with UGS Corp., a leading global
provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services.
Under the terms of their new agreement, Noran Engineering, Inc.
will directly market, sell, and support UGS’ analysis and
simulation software FEMAP and NX Nastran. Previously, NEi marketed
and sold FEMAP in the U.S. and internationally under the NEi brand
name, NEi
Nastran Modeler. NEi will continue to develop, market,
sell, and support its own line of engineering analysis software,
which includes NEi Nastran, NEiWorks and
NEiFusion. The announcement reaffirms the long standing distribution
arrangement between the two companies and signals a new initiative
on wider joint collaborative efforts to further develop and promote
FEMAP as the premier pre- and post-processing tool in the FEA
global market. The companies have agreed to leverage their unique
strengths and put in place cooperative programs that will enhance
FEMAP’s simulation capabilities and technical support, complement
their Nastran offerings, expand brand awareness, increase market
share, and grow sales revenue.
Simulation
through NX Nastran
Spend
a morning with Noran Engineering, Inc. and see how simulation
using Femap with NX Nastran can speed up your product design process
through virtual testing, and reduce costs and time to market by
minimizing physical prototyping. Join us for a webinar
on Thursday, April 19, 2007 from 10am to 12pm PST.
Femap is the
world’s leading advanced engineering analysis environment
that, being Windows native, has the ease of use but with full
functionality. The combination of Femap with NX Nastran provides
a high quality solution with assurance of accuracy and the scalability
to solve the most demanding of engineering problems. This free
seminar will illustrate how these analysis solutions can be applied
to your designs within your design processes. The seminar is intended
for both design engineers and seasoned analysts who want to experience
the latest affordable FEA technology available on PC’s.
Reserve your
webinar seat now at: https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/513925431
Events
and Trade Shows
Noran Engineering, Inc. will be
participating in several trade shows throughout 2007. A list of
our events is provided in the left column. The trade shows provide
a great opportunity to get a first hand look at new software features
and a chance to get attention to your specific analysis and simulation
questions. Below is a recap of some of the shows from the first
quarter of 2007.
SolidWorks
2007, February 4-7, at Morial Convention Center in New Orleans,
Louisiana.
NEi’s Technical
Director, Tony Abbey, gave a presentation entitled “Guide
to Design and Analysis using Composite Materials.” Visit
the Knowledge Base Center on the website to get a copy of it.
Dan
Morgan, pictured above, is working the booth at the SolidWorks
show.
Pacific
Design and Manufacturing, February 13-15, at Anaheim Convention
Center in Anaheim, California.
This exciting three-day
show brought together professionals from electronics, IT, telecommunications,
medical, consumer products, instrumentation, aerospace, industrial
equipment and transportation industries.
Pictured
above, Allan Hsu, Katarina and Jill Wilson put the finishing touches
on the booth before the doors open at the Pacific Design show
in Anaheim.
Allan
Hsu, pictured above, presents a demonstration to a group of attendees
at the Pacific Design show in Anaheim.
New
Product Development
Noran Engineering, Inc. prides
itself on responding to the needs of its customer base for new
features and enhancements. Below is a preview of what you will
find in the next release of NEi
Nastran, NEiWorks and NEiFusion.
New
features in the current NEi
Nastran v9.1 Beta
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Added
von Mises stress output for bar and beam elements. |
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Reduced
processing time for element strain energy results. |
| · |
Reduced
processing time for dynamic response analysis with complex
loading (Frequency and Transient Responses). |
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Added
a new, more accurate triangular plate bending element. |
| · |
Added
mass and stiffness DMIG support for the PCGLSS solver modes. |
| · |
Added
support for large strain hyperelastic and large strain nonlinear
elastic materials for solid elements. |
| · |
Added
Automated Impact Analysis such as drop test and projectile
impact studies. Using a simple input form to define projectile
initial velocity and acceleration, the NEi Nastran solver
will automatically setup surface contact between the projectile
and part and calculate the time steps needed to capture an
accurate nonlinear transient event simulation. |
NEiWorks
and NEiFusion v1.2 New Features
The release
of NEiWorks and NEiFusion v1.2 will continue to address many of
the enhancement requests that FE analysts have been looking for
in previous versions of NEiWorks and NEiFusion. Support for new
element types like beams and bar elements, combined with more
options and a greater range of dynamic analysis solutions gives
the user a more advanced set of FE solution types, while maintaining
the ease of use that our NEiWorks and NEiFusion users have become
familiar with in past versions. Modal Transient and Direct Transient
analyses solutions have been added. This combined with upgrades
to the already present Thermal Analysis solution continue to expand
the range of FE applications that NEiWorks and NEiFusion support.
More integrated post-processing and output result presentation
have also been emphasized, with support for both single set and
multi-set animations, along with an HTML based Output Report Writer.
HEEDS world
class optimization technology has been seamlessly integrated to
give the NEiWorks and NEiFusion users the ability to use this
highly powerful tool within the NEiWorks and NEiFusion FE Modeling
environment. Other enhancements include upgrading the mesh controls
to allow the user to specify such things as the number of elements
or the element size preferred along edges and sketch lines. To
expand upon the modern tree based interface of previous versions,
users now have full access to all NEiWorks and NEiFusion functionality
through menus and toolbars. This makes the product's GUI even
more user-friendly, especially to those users who are more comfortable
working within an FE application while using menus or toolbars.
In addition, an Automatic Impact Analysis Wizard has been added
to simplify the creation of an impact analysis on a model. This
wizard provides the expected accuracy and full set of results
that one would normally expect in an even more involved manual
setup of such a simulation, yet frees the user from the cumbersome
setup normally involved when performing this type of analysis.
All of this has been added to NEiWorks and NEiFusion v1.2, while
making use of the industry proven NEi Nastran
solver that continues to be at the forefront in both the speed
and accuracy of customer solutions within the Finite Element Modeling
community.
NEi
Nastran 64-bit version
The new 64-bit
NEi Nastran is a Finite Element Analysis
(FEA) software designed to run on 64-bit Windows Operating Systems.
In addition to being able to access memory above 4GB, the software
contains a new parallel equation solver technology known as Parallel
Sparse Solver (PSS). PSS fully exploits 64-bit hardware and the
combination provides FEA users with the following benefits over
32-bit:
| ·
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Significantly
faster solution speeds through parallel processing and efficient
use of CPU architecture |
| · |
Large
model capability (+15 million degrees of freedom) |
| · |
Efficiency
in the use of computing resources (e.g. speed scales with
processing power, high degree of independence of shared–memory
multiprocessing architecture) |
| · |
Enhanced
robustness in solution capabilities (e.g. handles non-positive
definite matrices) |
| · |
Reduces
the need for de-featuring |
A webpage
devoted to the discussion of 64-bit NEi Nastran
can be found at:
www.nenastran.com/NEiNastran V9 Windows x64.
Tech
Tips
Modeling
CBUSH elements in NEi Nastran
The first step is to create the CBUSH property (Model>Property).
If you click on the Type box, we can choose the spring element
type.
Be sure to
click on the Formulation box to select the CBUSH element formulation.
Otherwise, by default if you enter the CBUSH property values,
they will be written out as CVISC elements instead. If you notice
that you are using PVISC and CVISC elements, you can update them
to CBUSH by going to Modify>Update Element>Formulation.
The spring property input form is broken up into two categories.
Section A is for an axial spring. Section B is for the CBUSH element.
This is what we are interested in. You can add stiffness and damping
values for all 6 degrees of freedom. By default, it will use the
orientation coordinate system of the element. This is similar
to a beam element where the element x-axis is from end 1 of the
element to end 2 of the element. We define the y-vector when we
create the element, and the z-axis is calculated from there.
Alternatively, we have
the option to specify an orientation coordinate system. We can
use the Global Rectangular Coordinate System to define our stiffness
values as they are drawn on the screen. Specifying an orientation
coordinate system is required if we are defining a coincident
CBUSH element (end 1 and end 2 are co-located).
Once the CBUSH property
is defined, we have to create the CBUSH element. This can be done
by going to Model>Element. By default it will select the CBUSH
element type. If it happens to be something else, you can click
on the Type box and select the spring element. Don’t forget
to click on Formulation and choose CBUSH.
If you are
using the element coordinate system (did not select an orientation
coordinate system on the property) you must define the vector
for the y-axis. If you defined an orientation coordinate system
on the property, then you can skip this step.
Using
NEi Nastran to Scale New Heights
TGR
Helicorp develops unmanned helicopter for rescue missions
TGR
Helicorp, a new customer of Noran Engineering, Inc., is using
NEi Nastran software to develop an un-manned
helicopter to pull stranded mountain climbers to safety at Mt.
Everest. The rescue helicopter will be able to be remotely-controlled
at altitudes up to 30,000 feet and will be able to lower a lifeline
that climbers can latch onto. Once completed, New Zealand based
TGR Helicorp will donate the helicopter to the non-profit Rescue
team on Everest Trust.
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