Three Big Changes in Simcenter FLOEFD 2306

Electronics design and nonlinear solvers get big updates.

Last month Siemens announced the latest update for its Simcenter FLOEFD software. Major changes to the CAD-embedded computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software include electronics design enhancements, the integration of Nastran nonlinear applications and a faster mesher.

Simcenter has a very crowded CFD catalog with several options based on user needs. For instance, Simcenter Star-CCM+ is a high-end, multiphysics CFD software product; Simcenter SPH Flow is a meshless tool designed to provide fast results and Battery Design Studio specializes its workflows for battery engineers. FLOEFD’s differentiator is that it can be embedded within an organization’s CAD tools—so it is optimal to use early in the design process. The CAD tool doesn’t have to be from Siemens: NX, Solid Edge, CATIA and Creo users can all employ a FLOEFD plug-in.

Nastran users can bring the nonlinear solver functions to FLOEFD. (Image: Siemens.)

This update brings immediate improvements to electronic designers and more traditional CFD users. The power and speed benefits that FLOEFD gains from being CAD-embedded software are still there, and these changes have the potential to make everything happen just a bit faster. When the tool is embedded into the Siemens ecosystem, users get added benefits, as a few of these changes rely on the Nastran nonlinear tools.

Insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are typically used for high voltage and high current applications. MOSFET transistors run with lower voltage and power but can handle higher frequencies. Both transistor styles are still widely used in electronics applications, and because more and more everyday products have electronics embedded in them, simulation software needs to be ready.

Thermal studies using steady-state IGBTs traditionally use a two-resistor (2R) analysis model. Simcenter FLOEFD 2306 adds an option to take a 2R model and bring in electrical elements, allowing for applications like a nonlinear current-voltage curve and other more sophisticated studies. This method should give users faster results with more fidelity and make it faster and easier to understand the impact of small changes.

Giving simulation engineers more tools to use is an important part of these once- or twice-a-year updates. The software companies can’t know for sure every application that an engineer might need, but giving plenty of options for different applications will help to endear FLOEFD to end users. The parallel path to providing more functions makes the current functions faster, and there are a few speed boosts also coming with the 2306 release.

Different FLOEFD applications get a boost with the addition of Nastran’s nonlinear solving tools. The biggest change is just having the option to run nonlinear studies in the FLOEFD environment, instead of pulling models between CAD, FLOEFD and Nastran.

Large displacement studies can use Nastran nonlinear functions to optimize results. (Image: Siemens.)

This opens the door to several new study types, but the immediate beneficiary is structural analysis. However, it should be noted that getting the benefit of this function requires the user owning a license for Nastran. This probably won’t affect the biggest Siemens customers who have licenses for multiple software options and tools, but a smaller company might be initially excited by the possibility and then disappointed by the requirement for a secondary purchase.

The first application getting benefit from this new feature is FLOEFD’s large-displacement analysis. This is because users now have access to Nastran’s SOL 401 iterative solver, a “multistep, structural solution that supports a combination of static (linear or nonlinear) subcases and modal (real eigenvalue) subcases.” Having this directly available in FLOEFD is going to save users time because they no longer need to switch between applications. Users can work through the study, select Nonlinear instead of Static or Buckling study, and then use the Large Displacement option in the next menu.

When I was learning finite element analysis (FEA) software, the “large displacement warning” usually meant that a connection in the assembly was not where I thought it was and a part was flapping in the wind somewhere. However, the changes made here give users an option to deal with studies that go beyond a material’s limits.

The high-performance computing changes hitting the simulation industry mean that vendors are in a race to give users faster tools. For instance, leveraging the computing burden to the cloud lets users pay as they go and work faster.

Here, the extra computational power is used to change the way that mesh files are read and written, improving times on both the upload and download. Running on 32 cores, when compared with last year’s FLOEFD 2205 release, performed 2 to 3 times faster. For a standard user who runs complex model studies, this would be a significant shift from one day to the next.

Smart PCB import is another improvement area focused on going faster. Siemens called out that it used Intel Xeon Gold 6244 16 core processors on a 54 million node system. The new system streamlined the method of importing and building the mesh for a 6 times improvement between the 2205 and 2306 releases.

Ensuring tight links between multiple parametric CAD software options adds a degree of difficulty to the FLOEFD developers. Technically, there are five versions of the software and five new releases when FLOEFD’s NX, Solid Edge, CATIA, Creo and Standalone are counted. Version updates for big flagship software products are always a mixed bag. The balance has to be set between making changes for your biggest users, implementing minor or major bug fixes, and trying to figure out the needs of your users 1 to 5 years in the future. Maintaining that balance across five different formats is impressive.

Electronics designers are the big winners with the changes from the FLOEFD 2306 update, and with good reason. Predicting the electrification of everyday things would have been difficult 10 years ago. There was a short jump from adjustable thermostat to programmable thermostat to smart thermostat and many products are following a similar path. The need for everything to be connected, and the power and current requirements that came with that, required a shift in engineering and simulation.

Current mobility engineers are working to electrify vehicles, build autonomous roads and create stronger batteries. Ten years from now, electronics engineers might be working on methods that haven’t been dreamed up yet. The future can look grim or bright depending on your outlook, but the one certainty is that the future will need more things electrified and simulated.

FLOEFD does a good job with this release building from the inside out, taking already strong products like Nastran’s nonlinear solver and pushing them into the CAD-embedded CFD experience. Using CFD tools inside the CAD environment already makes for a faster change-to-results pipeline and the willingness to work with other CAD software tools only gives users more options. But these changes aren’t for rookies. A new user starting FLOEFD today would need quite a while to get up to speed and to them the benefit of the changes would not be immediately apparent. But for the heaviest FLOEFD users will see great improvements in the electronics design, nonlinear analysis and CAD integration.