| The SWAU Report, Issue 42 | Thursday, February 28, 2008 |
Introduction
SWAU — pronounced “swah-oo” — is the Southwest
ANSYS Users (SWAU), an organization of ANSYS users and people interested
in ANSYS, who are located in the Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico,
Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Western Kansas, and El Paso). The goal of
the organization is to provide a sense of community for ANSYS users
in the region, to serve as a means of communication about ANSYS,
and to provide technical and peer resources to those interested in
becoming ANSYS users.
News!
PADT - Wants You!
PADT is looking for a highly motivated individual to join our team in the following positions:
- FE Analysis Engineer
- Medical Lab Manager
For more information please visit the Job Opportunities page on our website.
Become an APDL Master with PADT's APDL Guide
Teach Yourself ANSYS Customization with PADT's APDL Guide
This guide is a compilation of course notes from PADT’s very popular ANSYS Customization with APDL class. By popular demand, PADT has turned these notes into a 288-page guide that steps new and experienced ANSYS users through all of the details of APDL scripting. Its 12 chapters include reference information, examples, tips and hints, and eight workshops. The guide, available in hardcopy only, is an invaluable resource to anyone who wants to start using APDL or become an ANSYS “power user”. At $75 plus shipping, this manual will quickly pay for itself by saving you hours of research and trial-and-error.
For more information on this guide or how to purchase, please visit our website
Join us at the 19th Annual HP CAE Symposium
For more information please click here:
More Than Just Speedos
Global research partnerships keep swimwear brand in the fast lane
In its 80th anniversary year, Speedo, the world's number one swim brand - represented in over 170 countries - has unveiled the world's fastest swimsuit, the LZR RACER®. This follows three years of research and development by Speedo’s in house R&D team Aqualab, working with a number of global partners including the United States space agency, NASA, world leading, computer-aided engineering software and service provider ANSYS, Inc., the world renowned sports science team at the Australian Institute of Sport and the cutting edge international fashion label Comme des Garçons.
To view full article, please click here:
ANSYS Expands HPC Benchmarking Program
New Test Suite Demonstrates High-Performance Computing
ANSYS, Inc. announced the availability of an enhanced high-performance computing (HPC) benchmark suite. Designed to guide customers who are adopting HPC systems for simulation, the improved benchmark suite has been used by ANSYS partners to assess performance of software from ANSYS on the latest HPC systems and technologies. The new benchmark suite provides updated simulation workloads for structural analysis and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), exercising a variety of simulation solution methodologies and addressing bigger simulation tasks, which increasingly have become the norm as engineering organizations tackle more detailed and complex simulations. The resulting performance data assists customers seeking to understand the benefit of HPC for specific simulation tasks and model sizes.
To view full article, please click here:
ANSYS Makes Forbes Fast 15 List
ANSYS, Inc. announced that it has been included on the Forbes Fast 15 list, a first-ever formal compilation by Forbes magazine of attractive companies with potential to become rapidly growing technology businesses in the future. ANSYS was the only engineering software provider to make the list.
To compile the Fast 15, researchers at Forbes scoured analyst reports and other news sources to identify strong performers among public U.S. companies in the technology sector.
Featured Article: Don’t Forget About EMAG
By Eric Miller
An issue came up with a customer recently, where he was evaluating an obscure piece of software from a foreign land when he was looking to model some electromagnetic behavior. When he mentioned this to one of our sales people he was surprised to know that with an additional license, he could model his problem in ANSYS – the tool he already knows and loves. This brought to my attention how much we concentrate on stress, vibration and fluid flow that we forget to talk about the significant breadth and depth of electromagnetic simulation available in ANSYS.
The equations that govern electromagnetic behavior in ANSYS are Maxwell’s equations, and ANSYS takes those equations and applies them to the Finite Element method. If you actually paid attention in Physics class, (I think I did, but that part of my brain was cleaned out to make room for Pokémon knowledge that I must have in order to communicate with my 9 year old son.) you will remember some of the details involved in how the electric and magnetic fields interact, and when frequencies are high, waves can propagate. If you don’t remember, or have reused that part of your brain, we recommend that you take a look back at the Low and High Frequency Electromagnetic Analysis Guide. It is also helpful to look at Chapter 5 of the Theory Reference.
For basic magnetic analysis, ANSYS has lots of options and can hold its head up high when compared with Emag-only specialty tools. The equation solution is the same for any software and ANSYS offers all the formulation options of the specialty tools. Where it shines is that you are doing your simulation within ANSYS so you have all of the capabilities of Workbench, APDL and of course there’s the fact that you already know the tool inside and out. Add to that the fact that EMAG in ANSYS, like most capabilities, is not designed for a specific level of use. You can get as in-depth as you need in order to get useful answers from your simulation. If doing a quick calculation directly from your CAD model is what you need, you can do that with EMAG in Workbench. If you need to get down and dirty and really optimize a complex electromechanical system, you can do that with ANSYS leveraging APDL, Design Modeler, ICEM CFD and all of the other capabilities available to you under the same tool.
The same is true for electric field analysis. ANSYS allows you to capture steady-state current conduction, quasistatic time-harmonic and time-transient electric fields, electrostatic and even simple electric circuits. There is a huge amount of capability in this area that most users are unaware of, especially Joule heating and circuit simulation.
The last big area to be aware of is the giant world of High Frequency Emag. So much of our modern world is governed by HFEMAG and ANSYS is right there ready to simulate what you need. Again, there are specialty codes that focus on this subset of analysis, but when you do an honest comparison, ANSYS has similar solver capabilities and far more advanced meshing and more efficient pre- and post processing. When PADT has been allowed to do a head-to-head shootout against other codes, ANSYS rarely comes up short.
These SWAU articles are supposed to be non-technical so we have not addressed in detail the advantages of finite element over boundary element or adaptive vs. intelligent up-front meshing. But one big thing that makes ANSYS the preferred tool for people working in the real world and not academia or research is the robust Multiphysics capability. Most engineers, who work on things that are electromagnetic, are doing so as part of a mechanical system that is inherently Multiphysics. Instead of converting a load from some other software into ANSYS to get stresses, acceleration or heating, we just solve everything at once.
Interested yet? You should be. If you need to do any Emag simulation and you are not using ANSYS, please give PADT or your local salesperson a call. We would love to show you how this often overlooked capability in ANSYS stands strong as a competitor in the world of electromagnetic simulation.
GOT CFD?
GOT CFD?
Whether you feel you need to start implementing CFD into your engineering analysis or you are looking for increased compute power, PADT, Inc. can assist you! We use two of the best and most comprehensive CFD tools available, FLUENT and CFX, which are unmatched in their breadth and depth of capability when solving the toughest or even the simplest CFD problems.
PADT, Inc. has CFD experienced engineers who are very familiar with FLUENT, CFX and a host of other CFD codes. This experience enables us to quickly assess an application, understand the challenges and provide you with timely, accurate and detailed results.
Give us a call or send us an email if you:
- Want to bring CFD into your engineering design and analysis and don’t currently have the expertise
- Don’t have the compute power to solve larger CFD problems
- Have purchased CFX or FLUENT and want some help, such as mentoring or services to get up to speed quicker
- Need a CFD job done now
- Or just need additional CFD resources
To speak with someone about your CFD and other engineering needs, please contact Stephen Hendry at: steve.hendry@padtinc.com or call 1-800-293-PADT (7238).
To view PADT’s CFD webpage, click here.
Promotions!
For a limited time, PADT is offering a 20% discount on parallel license keys that will be used on a new Windows CCS cluster. In addition, we can provide you with specially configured and discounted solutions that come bundled with Windows CCS. Contact the PADT Sales Team today to learn more.
Questions?
For more information or questions about these promotions, please contact PADT Sales.
PADT Training
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