NEi Maritime Newsletter - SAVIAC Special Edition - NEi Software

NEi Nastran V9.2 has a number of improvements and enhancements to our DDAM process. There are three items of particular significance.

• With V9.1, NEi Software added the capability of running DDAM in 3 phases. This way, only a small portion of the analysis needs to be run in a secure environment. Now, phase 2 in a 3-phase analysis will run without a separate license of NEi Nastran. This means that a secure computing network does not have to have its own licensed copy of NEi Nastran unless other classified computing jobs are needed. This can be a big saving for networks that do most of their Nastran computing in an unsecure area, but occasionally need to run the DDAM phase 2 in the secure area. The only data that needs to be removed from the secure network for the 3rd phase of DDAM is a small ASCII file with the necessary spectrum data in it.

• DDAM analysis can now be run using NRL 1396 coefficients using a simple flag. This allows users to get a ballpark estimate without the trouble of running it through the secure computing network.

• As the Navy moves toward using SI units, DDAM users have been stuck in the crack. DDAM is defined in English units, and a model built in SI units will not generate the appropriate spectrum values. With V9.2, NEi Nastran users can build their models in a number of alternate units
systems, including SI, cm, mm, and ft. The modal data are converted internally to DDAM units, the spectrum generated, and the DDAM data is translated back to the user's units. This capability is implemented with the existing UNITS parameter. On the parameter, the user tells Nastran what units his model is in, and the conversions built into NEi Nastran take it from there.

Other improvements include:

Enforced Motion

With the release of NEi Nastran V9.2, users no longer have to use large mass method for enforced motion. Tthis capability is implement on a combination of Nastran cards, including SPCD to flag the input points, and TLOAD to describe the format of the input. Direct input of displacement, velocity and acceleration are supported, in both modal and direct solutions. No more guesswork in choosing how large a 'large mass' has to be. No more differentiating displacement and velocity tracings to come up with acceleration input. With V92 the displacement, velocity or acceleration is entered directly on the TABLE Bulk data entry and Nastran is told which specified data type is on the TLOAD entry. This method is substantially less complicated and as a result there are fewer places for errors to creep in.

64-bit

The new 64-bit NEi Nastran is 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:

• Significantly faster DDAM solutions
• Reduces the need for de-featuring
• Significantly faster solution speeds through parallel processing and efficient use of CPU architecture
• Large model capability
• 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)
• A webpage devoted to the discussion of 64-bit NEi Nastran can be found at: http://www.nenastran.com/newnoran/64BitSolver.

64-bit Special Promo

Take advantage of NEi Software for high-performance computing on a wide range of analysis capability. For a limited time, we are offering a promotional discount on our NEi Nastran 64-bit version. Please contact us by December 15, 2008 in order to take advantage of this special promotion.

NEi Nastran V9.2 arrives November 1, 2008.