Altair has added Multiscale Designer to the HyperWorks Software Suite following the recent acquisition of MDS, LLC. Multiscale Designer is an efficient tool for the development and simulation of multiscale material models of continuous, woven, and/or chopped fiber composites, honeycomb cores, reinforced concrete, soil, bones, and various other heterogeneous materials.
Multiscale technology is a way to tackle the design complexities inherent in composites and other multiphase materials without the expected computational overhead. This is achieved by substituting an over-refined single FE model with multiple interconnected and coarser FE models representing different length scales. This approach yields computational gains that can reduce computational time from hours to minutes, without loss of accuracy or flexibility.
Applications include multiscale material modeling for design, ultimate failure, statistical-based material allowables, fatigue, fracture, impact, crash, environmental degradation, and multiphysics simulations and provides plugins to commercial FEA solvers such as OptiStruct, RADIOSS, LS-DYNA, and Abaqus. Multiscale Designer's unique feature is a systematic model reduction technology that simplifies complex unit cells with hundreds of thousands of finite elements, to a manageable number of deformation modes and state variables, eliminating the overhead of generating complex unit cell models and their linkage to macro-scale FEA solvers making multiscale modelling practical to implement for solving today's complex heterogeneous material simulations.
Multiscale Designer features include:
- Develop multiscale material models using forward homogenization and inverse optimization technologies
- Built-in parametric unit cells for unidirectional, woven, chopped, and particulate fiber composites
- Simulate nonlinear material behavior including ultimate failure at the micro-scale
- Obtain virtual material allowables supported by test and perform fatigue analysis
- Efficient plugins to commercial FEA codes OptiStruct, RADIOSS, LS-DYNA, and Abaqus
"Multiscale Designer adds significant new composites expertise to the Altair HyperWorks® suite, including multiscale analysis, stochastic design, fatigue analysis, multiphysics simulation, and tighter integration with Altair solvers OptiStruct® and RADIOSS®," said Dr. Uwe Schramm, Chief Technical Officer, Solvers and Optimization.
