SIMTEQ Newsletter January 2023

Introduction

News

Product of the month

The art of engineering

New releases

Training

Happy New Year! We hope you're feeling refreshed and ready to tackle whatever this year throws at us. We're excited to announce some new releases, including our product of the month, Adams Modeler. Additionally, get ready for the launch of Nexus, Hexagon's new open platform aimed at enhancing digital engineering and manufacturing on February 23rd. It's promised to be even better than a day without load shedding.

We're also thrilled to share that the latest edition of MSC Software's internationally renowned magazine, Engineering Reality, features a case study on Paramount Aerospace Industries. Make sure to check it out and see how they're utilizing local resources to achieve success. Because as we all know, "local is lekker!"

In addition to new releases, we want to remind you of the training opportunities available for FEA, CFD, and Structure Mechanics. We also invite you to join us at the Users' Conference in July, where we can all come together and share our passion for engineering. And if you're feeling brave, submit an abstract to present and showcase your skills. And remember, don't be afraid to add a little bit of humour to your presentation to lighten the mood.

Here's to a year of progress, growth, and a little bit of humour to brighten up our day.

Joke: Why was the engineer sad? Because he had no problems.

Regards

Managing Director

Inspiring news from local Manufacturers

Starting 2023 with a bang, SIMTEQ Engineering commends our aerospace clients featured in various news sources over the festive season thanks to their hard work and achievements. Both Dragonfly Aerospace and Paramount Aerospace Industries proved that local South African engineers and manufacturing companies still have what it takes to be globally relevant and respectfully competitive.

In the latest edition of MSC Software’s international and renowned magazine, Engineering Reality, Paramount Aerospace Industries is featured with its implementation of MSCOne and DFC Software. The article explains how workflows and timelines have been compressed with the help of MSC Apex. DFC Software, developed locally by JJ Joubert of Accentus Aero, accelerated the development by combining the strengths of MSC Apex, MSC Nastran and Patran to produce certification-ready, aerospace-approved stress reports. DFC Software is available on MSC One XT. The article was co-authored by SIMTEQ Engineering’s Zak Fourie and MSC Sofware’s James Pura.

Full Article

Engineering Reality Magazine 2023 Volume 1

The future of manufacturing is open (Nexus Launch)

The world of manufacturing is changing fast. Manufacturers need to be innovative, agile and respond quickly to change.

Join us on February 23 for the virtual launch event of Nexus, Hexagon’s new open platform to enhance digital engineering & manufacturing.

Connect people, technologies and data
Empower teams with data access and insights
Innovate faster using an open platform

Attend Live

Adams Modeler

Adams Modeler is the latest version of the Adams interface, which aims to provide an alternative to Adams View. The new Adams Modeler interface is built on a new framework that offers advantages such as enhanced CAD geometry management, simpler re-parenting of geometry, a robust model browser, direct modelling tools for easy object manipulation, a significantly improved flexible body generation process, and the ability to extract Nastran quasi-static stress results.

Probably the biggest challenge of a new or revamped interface is the feeling that you could have done it quicker in the original interface. However, with the Adams Modeler interface, frustration is addressed by having a one-button, bi-directional switch to Adams View. Once you’re done in Adams View, you can switch back to Adams Modeler by pressing the same button in the Adams View interface.

Adams Modeler is truly the best of both worlds.

Adams Modeler has some significant CAD geometry enhancements over classic Adams View. For one, Adams Modeler will retain the hierarchy of imported CAD assemblies. This hierarchy will also be propagated to the Adams View interface which can be accessed through the bi-directional switch, as opposed to the flat CAD geometry hierarchy that’s found in classic Adams View.

That is not the end of the CAD management-related enhancements. With Adams Modeler you can easily re-arrange your CAD hierarchy by dragging parts to the required assemblies in the model tree. This also propagates to the CAD features within the parts, where you can change the features’ parent part by dragging and dropping it into another part.

Changing the look of your parts is also readily accessible in the model tree, where the part visibility, colour and transparency can be changed with ease.

If you’re familiar with the MSC Apex, you will be presently surprised that you have access to the same intuitive and easy-to-use geometry creation and editing tools in Adams Modeler. This is also true for the mesh generations tools, giving you access to industry-leading mesh generation to create your flexible bodies natively within Adams Modeler.

The original Adams View interface was created for a world where the use of 3D CAD data was seen as a luxury and tended to negatively affect your model’s performance. As a result, it is cumbersome in its handling of 3D CAD, and that is where Adams Modeler steps in. A streamlined interface built around the use and manipulation of 3D CAD gives you a tool to better exploit the advantages that come with using detailed CAD models in your multi-body dynamics models.

Adams Modeler Compliant Connectors
Adams Modeler Forces
Adams Modeler Joints
Adams Modeler Motions

Project Mayhem

Project Mayhem, the Air Force's Secret Hypersonic Bomber, Has Begun Cooking

The Air Force's secret hypersonic bomber, Project Mayhem, is under development. The bomber will be able to travel at Mach 10 and is intended to replace the SR-71. The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory recently awarded a $334 million contract to engineering companies to oversee the designs, prototypes and tests of Project Mayhem. Hypersonic speeds make building and testing hypersonic planes challenging. The engineering of next-gen weapons and defense systems is based on speed and the U.S. may be lagging behind Russia or China in the hypersonic missiles arms race.

Adams 2022.4

Adams 2022.4 is now available at the Software Download Center.

Click here to learn about What’s New in Adams 2022.4.

The Adams 2022.4 release provides enhancements, including additional vibration results, support for the general bushing in Adams View, and stiction support for 3D analytical contacts.

General Bushing in Adams View

Provide the ability to leverage the Adams Car General busing in Adams View for more advanced bushing representations.

Vibration effective mass and energy by system mode

Identify which system modes are stimulated most by a given input

Plot Operating Deflection Shape (ODS)

An operating deflection shape shows the deformation of a structure at a specific frequency or during a time waveform playback.

Bushing in series for ride frequency bushings

Extend support for in series bushing capability to frequency dependent bushings

Stiction/friction model for 3D Analytical contacts

Support stiction (stick-slip friction) in contacts for 3D analytical contact cases

The following 3D CONTACT types can now realize stiction and sliding effects:

Sphere to Sphere
Sphere to Plane
Cylinder to Cylinder
Solid to Solid where one or both solids are the following Adams View primitives:
Sphere/Ellipsoid
Cylinder
Frustum

Automated static ride height adjustment in SVS event.

Extend SVS event to support automated adjustment of ride height during static equilibrium

Additional component support from Romax to Adams

Support for:

Concept Planetary Gear
Concept Helical and Loading Helical Gear
Spherical Roller Bearing
Thrust Roller Bearing, Thrust Spherical Bearing
Thrust Needle Roller Bearing

Marc 2022.4

Marc 2022.4 is now available at the Software Download Center.

Click here to learn about What’s New in Marc 2022.4.

Some main highlights of this release include:

Marc:

Shear-modified Gurson Damage Model
Circuit Components for High Frequency Induction Heating Enhancement

Mentat:

Full support of new Marc functionality
Integrated DoE Generator
Stress Linearization User Plugin

Patran 2022.4

Patran 2022.4 is now available at the Software Download Center.

Click here to learn about What’s New in Patran 2022.4.

Some main highlights of this release include:

Defect fixing in the aera:

- SOL 400 Rigid Contact Body Surfaces
- HDF5 postprocessing defects
- Patran crashes and many more others
Support of ASCII and binary STL import: The CAD import functionality in Patran now offers improved STL import performance. Both the binary and text (ASCII) STL files can be imported and the dependency on the mesh and Nastran toolkit component has been eliminated.
QT GUI designer for Patran GUI PCL creation: To overcome multiple overheads of writing any PCL UI code manually, a PCL UI Generator executable is introduced in this release of Patran. Any desired form/dialog can now be created easily using the drag and drop functionality within Qt Designer (‘designer.exe’ which is shipped with this Patran version) in the WYSIWYG way (What You See Is What You Get).
Enhanced Bolt Modeling with BOLT1: The support of BOLT in Patran consists of the user selecting a mesh that defines the bolt and having Patran automatically (or manually if desired) determine the bolt axis direction and split the mesh as necessary to write a proper BOLT entry, which requires a list of nodes above the mesh split and a list of nodes below the mesh split. Nastran now does this operation automatically and no longer requires a split mesh above and below the cutting plane defining the mesh split. The implementation will support BOLT1 with the same GUI by adding two more Methods: SIMPLE and CROSS-SECTION