CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
21 February 2012
Product News
Altair Releases New Version of Its Industry-Leading AcuSolve CFD Simulation Tool
Altair Engineering, Inc., announced the release of AcuSolve V1.8b, a powerful new version of its finite element based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation software within the HyperWorks suite of computer-aided engineering solutions. The advanced analysis tool, which offers robustness, speed and accuracy for analyzing complex designs driven by multiphysics and multidisciplinary simulations, introduces many new features and improvements in its post-processing, solver and pre-processing capabilities while dramatically enhancing the user experience.
Post-processor: Managing more complex CFD data
AcuSolve V1.8b offers a new and improved version of AcuFieldView. This OEM version of Intelligent Light’s FieldView CFD post-processor furnishes the ability to manage large and complex CFD data visualization requirements. It incorporates Intelligent Light’s most recent advancements in FieldView, including a new codebase that produces optimized graphics performance and a common graphical user interface (GUI) on all platforms.
The new AcuFieldView provides eight-way parallel operation instead of the standard four-way parallel FieldView base model. As a result, it is able to manage the largest AcuSolve results efficiently, with no model size limits or feature restrictions. With the addition of AcuFieldView to AcuSolve, users gain complete CFD capability, from pre-processing through solver solutions and post-processing, all within the AcuSolve solution environment. Customers will have access to these capabilities through their purchased pool of HyperWorks Units, the innovative token-based licensing model from Altair.
Solver: New turbulence models and viscoelastic material model
The AcuSolve V1.8b solver implements three new turbulence models:
SST (Menter’s Shear Stress Transport model)
SST-DES (SST-Detached Eddy Simulation model)
k-omega (2008 Variant of Wilcox’s k-ω model)
The addition of these new turbulence models provides a broader selection of turbulence modeling options within AcuSolve. Extensive work has been done to produce a robust implementation with an optimal convergence rate. These selections add to AcuSolve’s existing key turbulence models including LES (Large Eddy Simulation), DES (Detached Eddy Simulation), and other RANS models.
Pre-Processing: Edge-based surface mesh extrusions
AcuSolve V1.8b features full support for edge-based surface mesh extrusions through the AcuConsole GUI. With this powerful technique, users can mesh highly anisotropic (directionally dependent) features while retaining the simplicity and flexibility of automatic unstructured meshing on complex geometries.
Other features in the new release serve to increase performance and further improve the user experience. For example, compared to the previous AcuSolve version, improvements on domain decomposition for massively parallel applications allow V1.8b to deliver as much as a 15-times reduction in pre-processing time on large models with high core counts. This dramatic performance improvement comes at no expense in memory consumption.
“AcuSolve is highly valued for its speed, accuracy and robustness that make it the technology leader for CFD simulations,” said Farzin Shakib, vice president of CFD technology at Altair. “This release continues to build AcuSolve’s reputation for providing high-quality, fast, and robust solutions by introducing new physical models, techniques to reduce computation time, and a powerful post-processing solution.”
Registered Altair clients can download AcuSolve from the HyperWorks software downloads site and use it with their current HyperWorks license.
Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.
Tell us what you think of the CIMdata Newsletter. Send your feedback.
CIMdata is committed to your privacy. Your personal information will never be sold or shared outside of CIMdata without your express permission.