Industry Update: Analysis & Simulation Software

Multiphysics, simulation lifecycle management, unified simulation, and other terms are becoming the new trends in analysis and simulation software. There are new capabilities, new options for analysis and simulation management, and even room for growth in the market. We polled executives from leading software companies that provide analysis and simulation tools to find out what major changes have taken place in the products and how users will benefit.

Over the past year, major changes have occurred in the analysis and simulation software market, including the growth of the market itself. Major trends in new capabilities have advanced the software, including multiphysics, model-based design, and advances in computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

“We have seen multiphysics capabilities becoming a standard feature in the market,” said Dr. Ted Lin, managing director of AMPS Technologies. “There is increasing focus on integrated thermal- stress coupled problems. The demand for more realistic multiphysics and easy-to-use simulation software is on the rise.”

The trend toward the expanding use of nonlinear analysis and multiphysics simulation is a growing one, agreed Ken Short, vice president of strategy and marketing for SIMULIA. “Engineers realize that to get closer to simulating real-world behavior, they need more sophisticated simulation technology like nonlinear FEA and multiphysics,” he explained. “Multiphysics allows the solution of multiple physics to provide more accurate simulation results, rather than analyzing the physics separately.”

According to Mike Peery, president of Tecplot, CFD is growing in use, but has a long way to go in terms of computational speed. “CFD is continuing to be used in more and more engineering analyses. There are also many problems that we haven’t yet applied CFD to because of various technical challenges like multiphysics phenomena, complex multiphase flows, and unsteady turbulent flows.” He added that, “I have been waiting for a breakthrough in computational speed of CFD solvers. I am disappointed.”

The next “breed” of CFD, according to Andy Farrington, North American regional director for Flomerics, is Engineering Fluid Dynamics (EFD). “Unlike traditional CFD, EFD is CADembedded and design-centric. In other words, with EFD, mechanical engineers are able to use simulation as a step in the design process,” he explained.