ANSYS 2015 Hall of Fame Announced – Los Alamos National Labs and SynCardia Models are Finalists

Categories: Ansys

Tags: ANSYS, cfd models, fea models, hall of fame

Every year for a while now ANSYS, Inc. has chosen models made by users of the ANSYS software tools for their Hall of Fame. This year had some very cool models across CFD, Structural, and Electromagnetic – including some great Multiphysics applications. Visit the ANSYS website to see all the winners here.

The three commercial winers of "Best in Show" were varied but powerful examples of how simulation can be used to improve performance and reliability of products:

Andritz Hydro used ANSYS Mechanical to model their assemblies to see if replacing welds with bolted joints would reduce weight and cost while keeping reliability. They used sub-modeling, bolted joints, and contact.

BRP used ANSSY CFX, ICEM CFD, and Mechanical to capture the forces caused by cavitation on their outboard marine engine. This engine pushes a boat at 75MPH (!!!) through the water, so yes, they get cavitation. They used ICEM CFD for meshing, CFX to predict the cavitation and capture the cavitation loading, and Mechanical to see how the loading impacted the gear train and shafts. They were able to obitmize the desgin quickly using this process.

Spinologics used ANSYS Mechanical APDL to model the process of using a rod to straighten a deformed spine (scoliosis). They use the scriptability of the APDL to automate the creation of the models. Very cool stuff. Check out the video on the link.

We also want to mention two customers that were involved as Finalists.

SynCardia is often mentioned in this blog because, well, they make a frick'n artificial heart that saves lives every day. We modeled an early iteration on the heart as a multiphysic problem probobly 5 or 6 years ago, it could have been longer ago. More recently Stony Brook University and the University of Arizona did a much more detailed model in ANSYS Fluent that looks at not just pressure and velocity, but Platelet dispersion patterns in the artificial heart. Check out the video here: https://storage.ansys.com/hof/2015/video/2015-stonybrook.mp4

Los Alamos National Labs is another long time PADT customer and we were fortunate enough to be involved in the study that was recognized as a finalist. They used ANSYS Fluent to model something called vortex-induced motion or VIM in off-shore oil rigs. Basically waves hit the platform and create these big swirling vortices. These in turn put loads on the structure that can sometimes be very large. The purpose of this study was to find a way to accurate predict VIM with simulation so they could then evaluate various solutions. A true Fluid-Solid Interaction (FSI) and because of the size of the structures and all that turbulence, High Performance Computing (HPC) problem. We hope to publish a paper on some related work this year… watch this space for more.

This competition is a great way to see what others are doing, and if you submit your models, to show off what you have done. Contact your ANSYS rep to learn more or drop us a note.