10 Great New Features in ANSYS Mechanical 19.0 and 19.1

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ANSYS Mechanical version 19.0 has been available since late January 2018, while version 19.1 was released in May. If you haven’t had a chance to check them out, we thought it would be helpful to list what we see as 10 of the top newest features. We’ll start with five new features from version 19.0 and will then round it out with five from version 19.1.

ANSYS Mechanical 19.0

1. 4 Cores HPC Solving with No Additional Licensing

Previously, you were limited to solving on 2 cores at a maximum without having additional ANSYS HPC or HPC Pack licenses. That limit has been raised to 4 cores at 19.0.
To utilize the cores while solving, from the Solution branch in Mechanical click on the Tools menu, then Solve Process Settings. Click the Advanced button. Set the Max number of utilized cores to 4 and click OK.

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2. Topology Optimization Includes Inertial Loads

Topology optimization became a native option in ANSYS Mechanical in version 18.0. Topology optimization allows us to perform studies in which we preserve stiffness while reducing weight, for example. Since inertia loads are now supported in a topology optimization, one type of problem we can now solve is starting with geometry that has a mix of an inertial load (gravity in the downward direction) along with additional loading such as forces or pressures.

Solving the topology optimization and moving to the verification step we can see the optimization results (shape and contour results plot) for the combined loading.

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The ability to include inertia loads adds quite a few more problems that can be considered for topology optimization.

3. Small Sliding Contact

The idea here is that if we have confidence that the contact and target elements within a contact region will not slide very much, we can turn on the small sliding assumption. This speeds up the computations because less checking is needed for the contact elements during the solution. It’s activated in the Details view for one or more contact regions. We’ve seen some marginal improvements in solution times for a couple of test models. It’s clearly worth trying this if it applies to your simulations.

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4. Element Birth and Death

We now no longer have to use APDL command objects to incorporate element birth and death. If you’re not familiar with what this is, it’s the ability to selectively deactivate and/or activate portions of the finite element model to simulate forming operations, assembly, etc. Further, the implementation is fantastic in that unlike with the old MAPDL implementation, we no longer have to manually keep track of which elements have been ‘killed’ or made ‘alive’. The postprocessing in Mechanical 19.0 automatically displays only elements that are alive for a given results set.
Here is how it is implemented in the Mechanical tree, under the analysis type branch:

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The entities to be killed or made alive can be selected by geometry or Named Selections. There is a handy table that shows the alive or dead status for each Element Birth and Death object once they are setup:

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This animation shows a temperature results plot and demonstrates how the killed elements are made alive and automatically displayed when postprocessing:

5. Clipboard Tool

This new menu pick gives us an improved method for tasks such as selecting multiple faces. Rather than having to carefully pick all of them at once or use a combination of named selections, we can now simply select the faces that are easy to pick, add them to the clipboard, rotate the model, select more faces now that they are in view, etc.

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Once all the desired faces are in the Clipboard, we simply use the Select Items in Clipboard dropdown and we can now assign a load or mesh control, etc. to the desired faces.

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Note there are convenient hot keys for Adding to, Removing from, and Clearing the clipboard, shown in the screen captures of the menu dropdowns above.

ANSYS Mechanical 19.1

6. Granta Design Sample Materials

Version 19.1 adds a whole new set of sample materials from Granta. To access them, open up Engineering Data, click on the Engineering Data Sources button, and then click on the Granta Design Sample Materials button. This adds a lot more sample materials than have been available in Engineering Data previously.

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7. Materials folder in Mechanical

You’ll see a new branch in the tree in Mechanical 19.1: Materials. All materials that are part of your Engineering Data set will show up in this branch. For each material defined, we can click on the Material Assignment button or right click as shown here:

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One the new Assignment branch is created for a material, we can then select the bodies for which that material should be assigned. Each material has its own color which can be changed in Engineering Data if so desired.

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Important note for Mechanical APDL command users: Assigning material properties using the Materials branch results in all parts with the same material property having the same MAPDL material number. This is different from prior behavior in Mechanical in which each part in the geometry tree had its own material number identified with the ‘magic’ parameter name matid. Parameter matid now no longer is unique for each part if materials area assigned using the Materials branch. There is a new ‘magic’ parameter named typeids which identifies the element type number for each part in the tree. This new parameter is actually a 1x1x1 array parameter rather than a scalar parameter, so to make use of it in a command snippet we need to add the dimension (1) to the parameter name, like this:

thtest1=typeids(1)

or

et,typeids(1),solid65

8. Result Tracking During Solution

A new, useful capability is to be able to view a result item on a body, while the solution is running. You can now insert certain results items under Solution Information and view the status of the results while the solution is progressing. If birth and death is employed it will even display just the elements that are alive as the solution progresses. Here is an example of a temperature plot on a body while a transient solution is in progress:

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9. Save Animations to .wmv and .mp4 Formats

We now have two new options besides the old .avi format for exporting animation files. The .mp4 and .wmv formats both tend to produce smaller files than .avi format. When you click on the Export Video File button the new options are available in the dropdown:

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10. Solution Statistics Page

Finally, there is a new Solution Statistics page, available under Solution Information when a solution has completed. This is a quick and easy way to view performance information from your solution and helps determine if more cores or more RAM could be beneficial in future solutions of the same model. Here is an example:

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Conclusions

These are just a few of the enhancements that have been implemented in versions 19.0 and 19.1. These should help you be more productive with your solutions in ANSYS Mechanical as well as increase your capacity for simulating reality, and creating new geometry when it comes to topology optimization.

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