Helping engineers design products faster

Citation

(2002), "Helping engineers design products faster", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 74 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2002.12774dab.010

Helping engineers design products faster

Keywords: Software, Engineering, Design, Products

ALGOR, Inc., a maker of software for mechanical engineers, announces new fast solvers for linear static stress and steady-state heat transfer analyses that use sparse solver technology to provide what is believed to be significantly faster processing times. This speed is especially important when considering stress in any assembly model, such as a large CAD model, or performing a heat transfer analysis involving body-to-body radiation or forced convection (Figure 2).

Figure 2 This graph shows the results of a comparison between ALGOR's sparse solver and its previous skyline solver for linear stress analysis. Engineers used one model, varying its size to increase the number of equations in the anaylysis. The ratio of bandwidth to number of equations in the study was held at a constant 13 per cent

"With the new solvers, engineers can analyze larger models in less time and shorten the entire design process," said Michael L. Bussler, president of Pittsburgh-based company. "Through these performance gains, engineers can realize significant increases in productivity."

In a recent ALGOR study, engineers performed linear static stress analyses to compare the new fast solver with the previous, more traditional type of solver. This comparison reportedly showed that the new sparse solver completed 186,777 equations in about seven minutes, more than 430 times faster than the approximately 3,011 minutes it took the traditional solver to complete the same number of equations. The new solver was said to calculated nearly one million equations in just under eight hours.

"This new solver technology provides at least five times more analysis productivity than the previous solver, which is especially noticeable in analyses of large CAD assemblies," said Julian Holt, a mechanical engineering consultant with CADFEM in Leicestershire, UK. "I look forward to its implementation throughout ALGOR's 'entire FEA and MES [Mechanical Event Simulation] software product line in the first quarter of 2002."

Customers with current software upgrade subscriptions can receive the new sparse solver technology at no charge by requesting the latest updates for the linear static stress and steady-state heat transfer products. The software is available for PC workstations running Windows NT, Me, 98, 2000 or XP.

Details available from: ALGOR, Inc. Tel: +1.412.967.2700; Fax: +1 412 967 2781; E-mail: info@algor.com; Website: www.ALGOR.com