The Altair Partner Alliance (APA) is pleased to announce the addition of Dynamic Systems Analysis, Ltd.’s (DSA) ProteusDS and ShipMo3D to its software offering. ProteusDS is used to test virtual prototypes of systems that are exposed to extreme wind, current, and waves. ShipMo3D models the interactions of ships and offshore structures with waves and the marine environment.

“Altair provides many tools and solutions for the maritime industry and we are continually searching for ways to increase value to our customers,” said Molly Heskitt, Senior Director of Business Development, Marine and Shipbuilding Industry at Altair. “Working with DSA to provide access to their unique offerings in hydrodynamics and ship design is a great example of how Altair’s Partner Program can provide that additional value.”

ProteusDS is a full featured hydrodynamic, mechanical and marine dynamic analysis software package. It is customizable, validated, efficient, and aims to reduce risk. Using advanced time and frequency domain options, ShipMo3D can analyze freely maneuvering ships and other floating structures in a variety of sea states. With a wealth of features and models, ShipMo3D is capable of enhancing in-house analysis, design and system optimization capabilities.

“DSA has always been a simulation driven company. Simulation throughout every phase of a project can reduce risk and optimize solutions,” said Dean Steinke, Co-founder & Director of Operations at DSA. “Altair’s shared commitment of this vision is why DSA joining the Altair Partner Alliance makes so much sense. It is going to be exciting to see what Altair’s users can accomplish with our software using complementary applications such as HyperMesh®!”

DSA software is used across many industries including marine, offshore, subsea and inshore. Thanks to its highly customizable design, DSA software allows the assessment of unique applications while still providing accurate results. Data can even be exported from ShipMo3D to ProteusDS to simulate large floating or submerged structures as a part of complex moored systems.

Altair has acquired Solid Iris Technologies, a Greece-based technology company specializing in photorealistic rendering and visualization, with its high-end solution “Thea Render”. The companies have built a relationship over the past several years, with Altair using Solid Iris’ Thea Render superior technology to provide rendering functionality in its solidThinking Evolve concept design software.

James R. Scapa, Altair’s Founder, Chairman and CEO, notes that, “With the continued growth in performance and cloud availability of high performance computing (HPC), the opportunity to deliver rendering solutions for applications from architectural visualization and product design to entertainment and augmented reality is truly exciting. We look forward to delivering powerful new capabilities to our software community of designers and engineers.”

Thea Render is a state-of-the-art Biased, Unbiased and GPU renderer with a rich set of innovative features, a powerful material system and its own advanced studio. Integrating this photorealistic rendering technology with solidThinking and Altair products will contribute significantly to a completely new experience to visualize, model and design. Thea Render is also integrated on many modeling applications, with thousands of users who will benefit from Altair’s global support and training resources.

“Vision is the most important human sense”, says Ioannis Pantazopoulos, Managing Director of Solid Iris, “and it plays a vital role in our understanding of the world. As we fully integrate our team and technology within Altair, we are committed to advancing the user’s experience such that product creation will seem to occur inside a real scene rather than in front of a computer screen.”

Altair announced recently that Rolo Bikes, a European manufacturer of high performance road bikes, has used Altair’s computer-aided engineering (CAE) HyperWorks Suite to design, optimize, and develop the world’s lightest and stiffest road bike. In addition to the use of HyperWorks, Rolo Bikes’ engineers were supported by Altair ProductDesign, Altair’s engineering services division, in the design, optimization, and the virtual testing process of the bike. The objectives of the project were firstly to optimize the frame to achieve world leading performance for weight, stiffness and comfort; and secondly to develop an efficient virtual testing process to analyze the performance of future bike frames both from Rolo and other partner companies.

Rolo Bikes had already created virtual test jigs to replicate the European Committee for Standardization (Comité Européen de Normalisation or CEN) tests as well as the Zedler stiffness tests using HyperWorks, and had correlated a baseline frame model to physical tests. The baseline model weighed 829g but was extremely difficult to manufacture. Initial virtual analysis of the baseline design highlighted several areas of concern where the frame was under particularly high stresses. The optimization stage of the project wanted to address these high stress areas in a weight efficient way while ensuring a manufacturable design.

To optimize the carbon fiber frame, Altair ProductDesign utilized a three-step approach, during which the shape, thickness, direction and location of each layer of composite material was fine-tuned until an optimum solution had been reached. Each stage was performed using HyperWorks design optimization solution, OptiStruct®. At the end of this three-step process, HyperWorks was again utilized to analyze and validate the optimized frame against the CEN and Zedler tests. The resulting composite layup created a component that is manufacturable based upon Rolo’s meticulous hand layup construction process employed in its European based manufacturing center, all within cost targets.

The composite optimization process successfully reduced the weight of the frame from 829g to 792g. Additional material tweaks by Rolo’s manufacturing team reduced the weight even further resulting in a final weight of just 710g. The design met all performance and safety standards with the stiffness, durability and performance being enhanced significantly over the target values.

“We chose HyperWorks for our project because we think that it offers us the most powerful tools for our optimization and development tasks within one suite,” said Adam Wais, CEO, owner and co-founder of Rolo Bikes. “In addition, the use of HyperWorks enabled us to develop our own simulation tools for virtual testing. When we realized that we could use additional engineering support and manpower in our development and optimization process it was a natural choice for us to work with Altair ProductDesign, since the company’s engineers are very familiar with HyperWorks and have tremendous expertise in designing and optimizing composite materials. Working with Altair ProductDesign and using the HyperWorks suite has enabled us to develop the highest performance in the world with respect to weight, stiffness, and comfort. This project was completed in record time with close to no prototypes.”

“We are delighted that Rolo Bikes chose HyperWorks and Altair ProductDesign to develop their exceptional bike,” said Håkan Ekman, Managing Director Altair Northern Europe. “Altair boasts a long tradition in the development of CAE software and engineering services, especially in the area of optimization. To work with Rolo Bikes on such an outstanding project was a great pleasure for our engineers and we are looking forward to extending this collaboration on future projects.”

Rolo Bikes will present the bike during the Euro Bike trade show from August 27 – 30 in Friedrichshafen, Germany and invites interested parties to an interactive workshop. During the workshop, engineers from Rolo Bikes and Altair will jointly present the results of this development project.

Altair HyperView Player is a plug-in and stand-alone utility that enables users to share and visualize 3D CAE models and results.

Available for following OS.

Windows – x86_64 (64-bit) – Vista/7/8.1
Linux x86_64 (64-bit) RHEL 5.9/6.2, SLED/SLES 11 SP2
Mac x86_64 (64-bit) Mac OS X 10.8

For Download visit – http://www.altairhyperworks.in/ResourceLibrary.aspx?keywords=&industry=All&product_service=All&category=Free%20Software%20Downloads&order_by=title

With HyperXtrude 2015, engineers can analyze material flow and heat transfer inside a die during extrusion to validate die designs, reducing costly and time-consuming trials.

HyperXtrude 2015, a new version of the popular simulation tool for extrusion processes was launched by Altair recently. For the first time, engineers on the shop floor may validate die designs using computer-aided engineering (CAE) techniques directly from computer-aided design (CAD) models. This change represents a significant workflow improvement.

Extrusion companies today must create a more extensive mix of complex profiles in a shorter period of time than ever before. At the same time, there is constant downward price pressure on production costs.

A completely new, intuitive interface distinguishes HyperXtrude 2015 from previous releases of the leading physics-based extrusion solver. HyperXtrude 2015 automates routine steps of the model building process with no compromise on accuracy or mesh quality, allowing die designers to perform simulation with very little time spent on learning or modeling the software. The setup of an analysis happens directly on the CAD model while the mesh and complex details stay hidden in the background. As a result, users without a finite element analysis background can use the tool to validate and optimize their die designs. For example, while experts may have spent two to four hours meshing a model with previous software tools, HyperXtrude 2015 allows the completion of pre-processing in just 15 minutes.

“HyperXtrude 2015 takes a giant leap forward, making CAE accessible to the engineer on the shop floor,” said Mahender Reddy, Development Director at Altair. “Our next-generation framework is much easier to use, allowing model setup in a CAD-like environment that is very easy to use. It bridges the gap between engineers, analysts, and manufacturing specialists, making communication among departments much more seamless.”

Employing CAE in the extrusion industry is a relatively recent trend. With the increased focus on aluminum and various polymer extrusions in the automotive and aerospace industries, the use of CAE has become a critical quality differentiator. Designers need to ensure that extruded parts exhibit the correct strength properties with no flaws or blemishes.

“CAE tools give us additional confidence in the design process,” says Jeff Skinner, responsible for research and development at Thumb Tool and Engineering, a subsidiary of the Gemini Group. “When extruding materials, it is critical to avoid imperfections while meeting structural requirements. Our outputs undergo a very high level of scrutiny with respect to finish quality, and HyperXtrude helps us achieve that quality, every time.”

HyperXtrude 2015 supports steady-state metal extrusion analysis and includes analysis of solid and hollow profiles, direct and indirect extrusion, and single and multi-hole dies. Imported CAD models can be oriented and positioned appropriately. A flow-volume creation feature enables the creation of flow volume (negative volume) from the die solids. Flow volume can be extracted from the die assembly with a mouse click. HyperXtrude 2015 also offers sketching capabilities, with tools that create points, lines, surfaces, solids and other geometric shapes from scratch.

Among the most helpful features of HyperXtrude 2015 are its powerful Simplify/Patch tools that allow users to clean up problem areas in the geometry of a model before running the analysis. These tools will remove imprints, rounds and fillets. They can be used to plug holes and pockets or create patches and bridges. Also available in this version are tools for measurement, mass calculation and support for different unit systems.