Speed improvements have been made across several functions and platforms.
Saving Time While Doing More?
The engineers and programmers at Ansys say that engineering exploration performed via simulation is almost risk free. Without the requirements of prototyping, design validation testing, and redesign, the process of testing several iterations of a design can be compressed into days instead of weeks or months. The latest release of the software suite, Ansys 2021 R2, boasts several changes made to incorporate speed improvements and add functionality. Larry Williams, distinguished engineer from Ansys Inc., answered some questions for us about this release.
When asked about the pandemic and the effects that it has had on Ansys product development, Williams said, “Like our customers, many of our software development team members worked from home while delivering over a thousand new features across the physics platform, synchronizing software integration artifacts across the globe, and leveraging Cloud at scale for software development and verification.” He said that during this era of work from home, Ansys noticed that its customers have continued to use the software to shrink development times and treat simulation as a much more collaborative online-based tool. Ansys Cloud especially gives engineers the ability to ask what-if style questions and work through the simulations to find the answers.
Changes Made to Physics-Based Products
When discussing his specific contributions, Williams said, “While my contribution covers the advancement across all physics products, my traditional focus is on electronics and electrical systems, especially high-speed and high-frequency applications. I am pleased to announce several advancements.
“In high-frequency electronics, we added a new Phi Plus meshing engine that speeds 3D-integrated circuit package challenges, enabling electromagnetics and signal integrity analysis by an average of 6-10x.
“In optics, productivity enhancements allow engineers to perform optical simulation meshing up to 20x faster and local meshing up to 100x faster. In structural analysis, Ansys Mechanical 2021 R2 streamlines cyclic modal [analysis] using a new multistage cyclic symmetry capability that can decrease runtimes by up to 50x when compared against a full 360-degree solve.
“In semiconductors, 2021 R2 provides 3nm-ready Advanced Power Analytics (APA) and improves voltage-drop fixing efficiency by 3x, using aggressor identification, what-if analysis, and links to engineering change order (ECO) tools. Using the cloud for semiconductor simulation delivers at least 4x better cost and core-hour efficiency with Ansys 2021 R2.
“In fluids, Ansys 2021 R2 provides up to a 5x speed increase for high-speed flows to Mach 30 and above, with improved treatment of reaction sources in the density-based solver.
“Finally, simplified, reduced-order workflows throughout Ansys 2021 R2 provide quick answers to product design and development problems, allowing engineers to concentrate computing power on the best design candidates.”
Additive Manufacturing and Structural Analysis Get Goosed
One of the big areas affected by 2021 R2 for me was the additive manufacturing realm. Additive manufacturing users were given a new Calibration Wizard to ensure that the parameters of their individual machine can be simulated as closely as possible. Variable layer heights are also an option now, which help to find the optimal height for any given application. Meshing defaults were tweaked and bond connections improved to give better accuracy and numerical consistency to the additive manufacturing models. General speed improvements in the microstructure simulation times will give users additional time to apply more threads to their designs, ultimately saving time in the full development process.
The structural segment of Ansys also found a series of improvements across its different offerings. Ansys Sherlock now works with Ansys LS-DYNA through a workflow that will create mesh for drop tests with a single click. Drop tests also get a boost through new pre-stress loading tools and the ability to quickly restart the simulations. Several different symmetrical pattern zones can now be created in one model when analyzing a symmetrical part, with the end result of having a much smaller model size overall and in some cases cutting the runtime by a factor of 50.
Autonomous Vehicles and Certification Testing Improvements
Autonomous vehicle (AV) development continues to be a big part of the world’s engineering focus, and with the development of vehicles and infrastructure comes the need for AV simulation. Ansys offers both Autonomous Vehicle (AV) and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) Simulation Software, and both areas saw some love with this new release. The release added the ability to talk to third-party driving simulators, taking Ansys’ physics-based sensors and coupling them with some of the best tools currently on the market. Verification and validation of sensor configurations is now possible while studying a driver’s perception.
Headlamp designers get new certification testing and added analysis capabilities. A closer marriage between the VRXPERIENCE Headlamp tool and Simulink scripts inside the software can build more detailed reports and more closely align with Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tests. Another Simulink script incorporated into the headlamp tool will match up with the Chinese Insurance Automotive Safety Index (C-IASI) tests.
The VRXPERIENCE environment has new sensors with advanced illuminance checks, so each specific application’s key product characteristics can be monitored throughout a simulation. Speos also sees a few improvements, as the optical system design software reduces required processing time on several fronts. New tools are introduced in modeling, visualization and LiDAR with the goal of reducing simulation time. Meshing is now created up to 20 times faster, while the processing speed is up to six times faster. Speos Live Preview is built up to give users a true-to-life vision of what the vehicle might see, because the calculation base for polarization has been changed to more closely resemble the Speos CPU results.
Back to Mechanical, and Beyond
Looking at all these changes, it’s interesting to note that simulation goes so much further than the mechanical stress and strain checks that I remember using at the beginning of my engineering career. Ansys Mechanical’s big change for the 2021 R2 release is the addition of Python code objects. Placing Python scripts into the simulation can help users to optimize designs to a specific parameter or property and then update other components in the system based on that information. The example shown in the Mechanical update video shows a bolt pattern with pre-tension values incorporating a script to update each bolt in the pattern.
Three-dimensional sectors can be created from two-dimensional surfaces, eliminating the need to build the 3D objects in another software. Creating volume meshes from surfaces will create shorter development times in applications like turbines and printed circuit boards. Acoustic transient analyses are now possible when a user designates a fluid region around a component and then examines the dynamic behavior of the fluid region.
Another interesting addition to Ansys Mechanical is resource prediction. The software tells users how much computing power is needed for a given simulation, translating it into time. This will allow for better planning of a user’s time and the computer as a resource.
Can We Be Better Just Because We’re Faster?
Many of these changes are framed as improvements meant to save users time. If we can run faster simulations in the early development stages of a project, another set of iterations can be investigated. Saving time to market will by extension save money and possibly even distinguish a company from its competition. As Larry Williams said, there are almost 1,000 changes here and many were made with an eye on getting users their simulation results faster. My perception is that change is driven from user feedback, internal projects, and opportunities where the computer processors are more powerful so Ansys can do more powerful things. It will be interesting to watch in the next few years to see how much more powerful computers will become, what Ansys can do with that additional power, and how its customer base can benefit from it.