FEA software joins the mainstream

According to Dr Joop Nagtegaal, corporate fellow with Abaqus, for those who want to be competitive in manufacturing today, it’s not a matter of choice, “FEA is a must-have technology”.

Nagtegaal, who is based in the US and heavily involved with the product’s analysis codes, says the best way to describe FEA is as a virtual prototyping tool.

“Instead of building something and testing it to see whether it works or breaks, manufacturers should test it on a computer first,” Nagtegaal told Manufacturers’ Monthly during his recent trip to Australia.

“The uses are very widespread, including aeroplanes, cars, shampoo bottles and manufacturing prototypes. It’s not limited to a particular area.”

While Nagtegaal suggests most engineers of larger companies know and understand FEA, he’s not so positive upper management is fully aware of it.

“But they should be. There’s still quite a bit of room to grow, and our being absorbed and combined with Dassault shows this is going to be as mainstream as anything else these guys do.”

One of the hottest topics Nagtegaal is presently working on is simulation lifecycle management.

“Users do the simulation and put it on the database where they can access it and link it to CAD and other systems. We link our software with Catia, but also with UGS, PTC and most major CAD systems,” he said.

FEA for the designer

Nagtegaal admits traditional users of FEA software have been people who really understand simulation, however the company’s newly developed Abacus for Catia V5 is clearly aimed at the designer.

Abaqus for Catia V5 Version 2.4 software for FEA within the PLM process is the latest release from Simulia, the Dassault brand responsible for developing an open platform for the integration of multi-disciplinary analysis as well as the Abaqus and Catia Analysis applications.

Version 2.4 integrates a broad spectrum of advanced linear and non-linear FEA capabilities within the Catia V5 environment. It introduces several advanced analysis capabilities, such as dynamic analysis, self-contact, sub-modelling and cyclic symmetry.

“We have also released some new tools that make the meshing more automatic. As part of my lectures in Australia, I presented some new adaptive technologies that we do automatically.

“While the users doing the analysis do need to understand some of the physics involved, they don’t need to understand the numerics anymore.

“People have done some simple analysis technology, linear analysis and linear vibrations in the past, but the world is more complex than that, and the parts are more complex.

“Today it’s a must-have technology,” Nagtegaal said.

However, Gerd Diegelmann, GM of Abaqus Australia, says cost appears to a major issue for local companies, especially SMEs.

“By using cheaper linear tools for non-linear problems they often find themselves in a lawsuit.

“They do the wrong thing just to save a couple of dollars. People forget that in engineering, you can’t cheat nature.

“In Australia, often the first question is ‘how much is it’? In Europe and the US it’s different,” he said.

According to Diegelmann, if manufacturers really want to do it right they should use FEA at the very beginning of the product development cycle. He points to early-adopter studies by PricewaterhouseCoopers and other similar companies that show the earlier companies adopt FEA, the more money they save in the end.

“The major car companies recognise the benefits, but smaller companies often need convincing.

“We are a bit different to CAD companies. With CAD it’s really the more you spend, the more bells and whistles you get. With FEA it’s different because of the underlying equations,” Diegelmann said.

Nagtegaal says for the one price, you can still get all the bells and whistles, “but you are limited to one analysis at a time instead of running five different ones at a time.

“But the fact that we are growing every year by double digits, and the market is growing by that kind of level, it shows that this technology is spreading,” Nagtegaal said.

Ranga Kandadai, CAE account manager with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)Australasia, agrees FEA systems are getting easier to use and becoming more mainstream. But rather than cost, he believes the lack of skills is holding the technology back.

“The first obstacle is the lack of skills; second is the additional cost involved with FEA. But it is getting easier to use,” Kandadai told Manufacturers’ Monthly.

“The larger companies, the car companies, the aerospace companies, plus the tier one and tier two automotive companies are already using FEA.”

But according to Kandadai, other companies are now picking up the technology, citing injection moulded parts and tanks as examples. “Clearly anybody who’s doing design needs FEA.”

However rather than outsourcing FEA, Kandadai is seeing a recent trend of CAD software companies bundling in FEA systems for zero or little extra cost.

“For example, our NX Mach bundle includes a very powerful FEA tool with stress and vibration wizards.”

The question is how much capability users are getting, with Kandadai admitting there are limitations to this bundled capability.

Abaqus 03 9421 5740.

PLM Australasia 1800 303 202.