I want to personally thank everyone who has supported Noran over the many years.

2004 has been a very exciting year for Noran Engineering. We have experienced strong overall growth and our growth in the Analysis market has doubled over 2003. We released version 8.3 earlier this year and hope to have version 8.4 out before the end of the year.

Our success for 2004 must be our commitment to “Customer Driven Enhancements” and our “Technical Support Team”. We at Noran Engineering are pleased to announce that 90% of the enhancements in versions 8.3 and 8.4 came directly from you the customer.

I am also excited about our new web site. We spent over six months developing the new site with the intent to make it informative to the buyer and user.

As always, I look forward to any comments or suggestions you may have to make this newsletter a valuable source of information.

Anca Timmermans provides technical and sales support for NEiNastran, tests new software versions and updates, and writes documentation. Anca has previously held a similar position at MSC.Software in USA and Compumod in Australia. She has over 15 years experience in the field of civil and structural engineering, with almost 7 years of FEA and customer support. Ms. Timmermans earned a MS in Civil Engineering from Romania and a MS in Structural Engineering from Australia.

Customer Driven Solutions

analytical community.

Now, in addition to listening to what our customers are looking for from us, we get to share in their success stories. Customer comments and testimonials are common these days here at NEi. Recently, we received the following comment from Chris Holmes, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, regarding the new contact element feature in NE V8.3. "Using NE/Nastran for this analysis saved us hours

and hours of time. This new feature helps eliminate the high number of contact surfaces.”

In future newsletters, we will use this forum as a way to better inform you of the activities within the NEiNastran market.

Our new web site boasts a more organized layout that helps customers find information quickly. The site also features improved up-front information including general advice and guidelines on selecting finite element analysis software, guidelines for selecting Noran Engineering products, and a new 90-second demo on the technology.

Noran Engineering is focusing on using part of the web site to offer new users the information needed

to assist them in purchasing the right products for the right applications. The new site contains many more animations, demonstration videos, and interactive tutorials than our previous site. It also contains better organized product features documents and a new product feature matrix to help customers make decisions.

We have launched a great new tool. Our industry specific section can assist new users in particular industries to see specific features that pertain to them. We have added sections for New to FEA, Existing Nastran Customers, Existing Customers, and a new section for Universities. Our section for testimonials drives home our commitment to Customer

Driven Solutions.

To aid in bringing the NEiNastran community closer together, we have added a NEi Community Forum. The forum will allow for customer interaction, sharing of ideas, suggestions, techniques, and education. In addition, we have specific categories where people can introduce and promote their company to others who might be able to use their services, as well as a place where companies can recruit engineers in the field.

Noran Engineering is a customer driven company, so we encourage customers to use the forums for requesting future enhancement ideas. We will also make announcements in the forums and conduct surveys to better support our customers.

Noran Engineering, Inc. was one of the key participants at this year's SAVIAC conference for Shock and Vibration in Virginia Beach. Our contribution included two tutorials (DDAM using NEiNastran and Non-Linear analysis using NEiNastran) and a conference paper (Investigating the scope and application of DDAM in large scale analysis models). In addition, I was invited to sit on the expert panel at the DDAM open forum. Our involvement at SAVIAC was a great success.

As always, it was great to meet clients we have known for several years, to see how they are benefiting from NEiNastran and to hear about enhancements they want in the code. It is also especially rewarding to meet

brand new clients who are so enthusiastic about the product.

We are renowned for our ability to implement powerful, well designed enhancements in a very reactive manner. As a result of intensive discussions on the DDAM analysis method with clients, NAVSEA and other interested parties at the conference; our clients will be delighted to hear of several key enhancements completed, or on the board, for the 8.4 release.

Our client presence was so strong at SAVIAC that we are considering holding a Noran Engineering User Group meeting at next year's event. 

NEiWorks is a design analysis tool fully integrated within the SolidWorks® 3D modeling environment which can work with any Nastran FE solver, including NEiNastran, NX NASTRAN or MSC.Nastran. This makes NEiWorks the first design analysis tool that offers upward and downward compatibility with industry standard solvers. This breakthrough will allow designers to send usable data directly to the analytical engineers.

“We have built a solid reputation for customer driven solutions with our flagship NEiNastran product and we have carried that tradition forward to NEiWorks”, said Tony Abbey. “We intend to impress Design Engineers with the ease of use and power of this tool. The concept and layout is a direct result of focusing on what Design Engineers have told us they need in a product like this, combined with our many years of experience in FE Analysis.

Beta testers have already shown excitement about the unique approach we have taken in giving them a comfortable and familiar SolidWorks environment which harnesses the power, reputation and compatibility of Nastran.”

“This breakthrough product is tightly integrated with SolidWorks so the analysis data is seamlessly updated when geometry is changed” commented Sisira Jayasinghe, Director of Software Development. “The state-of-the-art finite element mesh generation and display technology are used with innovative user interface to assist the designer and the analyst alike. The ability to create solid and surface elements in the same mesh sets NEiWorks apart from all other design analysis tools.”

Early in the development plan

to deliver a new tool/technology to such an advanced industry, one thing became abundantly clear: most of the technology needed to drive the efforts of simplifying a difficult process for the design engineers lies in the user interface. The missing link was in allowing these tools to interface with many industries standard solvers. NEiWorks is the only design analysis tool that clearly protects the investment currently made by customers using Nastran solvers. Moreover, it will allow design departments and analytical departments the ability to communicate more effectively.

This is an exciting new development within our industry. We are very excited about the future and will be releasing another press release later next month regarding distribution. We will be seeking a new network of dealers that can assist customers with cost cutting technology.

If you know what the phrases "CMS" and "Craig Bampton" mean then you will be delighted to see the technology in V8.4. This implementation is extremely easy to use, with a few very simple steps to take. It is a core product and requires no macro or DMAP to drive it. Beta test clients are impressed how rapidly a potentially complex process can be handled.

For those unfamiliar with the method it has several very important uses; it allows sub components of complex structures to be modeled independently and reduced to simple "black boxes" with defined connection points.

The black boxes can be assembled together and solved as a dynamics system very cheaply, without losing accuracy. The key technology is the fact that the internal vibration modes of the components are preserved, hence the term Component Mode synthesis (CMS).

Typical applications include a prime contractor wanting to provide a subcontractor with a system model to attach a component design to. The prime contractor preserves the confidentiality of the full vehicle model, be it a spacecraft, ship, road vehicle etc., while the

subcontractor benefits by having an accurate interface to connect to, that will replicate the dynamic characteristics of the whole vehicle.

Another classic application is where a component is undergoing extensive redesign within an assembly. We don’t want to rerun the whole model each time the component is updated, so we can treat the rest of the assembly as a black box, connected to the changing component. The savings in run time and housekeeping are enormous, while maintaining the accuracy of the full system.

V8.4 has over 60 significant enhancements. We are currently in V8.4 Beta test mode and finalizing the additional functionality that will be included over the list on the right.

This version brings many powerful new features into NEiNastran including a completely new Editor with advanced post processing and a new graphics engine (Figure 1) as well as improved engine performance and capabilities.

Dynamic analysis is boosted with the addition of an automatic set of Modal Checkout tools via the editor, automatic Modal Correlation with 2D/3D plots (Figure 2), Craig-Bampton method for accurate substructuring and Residual Vectors to reduce modal truncation.

Nonlinear analysis introduces Arc-Length methods for snap through and buckling, along with many other improvements.


Figure 1. New V8.4 Editor with
improved post processing.


Figure 2. 3D Modal Assurance
Criterion (MAC) plot.

An example is shown below where two sides of a beam are meshed with different element types. One side was meshed with HEX8 elements and the other side with TET10 elements. The joining surfaces were connected using surface contact, and a linear static solution was run. As you can see stress results show a continuous stress pattern demonstrating the weld effectiveness.

Figure 3. Stress Contour of beam welded using surface contact.

Figure 4. Stress Contour of gears with surface contact.

To use displacement based stiffness updating, edit the BSCONP contact card, and add a value in the TMAX field (field 3, row 2). When this value is non-zero, displacement based update method is used. The value of TMAX determines the amount of penetration between the contact surfaces. A recommended value of TMAX is between 1% and 10% of the element thickness for plates or the equivalent thickness for other elements that are connected to the contact element.