Advanced simulation software reduces late changes and costs

TriMech has continued to grow the suite of products that we can support to help our clients handle a wider variety of problems. Today I want to specifically talk about the Simulia product line including its capabilities and applications. Adaptive Corporation was acquired by TriMech in 2021 and has an amazing product portfolio, as well as technical staff to support the software. In this blog, I’m going to explain how all of this will benefit you going forward, working with TriMech.

Now that TriMech can offer both SOLIDWORKS simulation and SIMULIA products, I want to talk about the differences between the two solutions and some of the common reasons to use one or the other. After going through the products, you should have a better feel for the two and if you have any questions or are just curious about something, please reach out to your local TriMech resource!

Post Failure Analysis

The Simulia products run on the Abaqus engine, which results in increased capabilities on what type of studies we can solve compared to SOLIDWORKS. The big differentiation between the two products is being able to visualize the failure occur. This could mean seeing where a crack is going to propagate from or how a structure behaves after buckling has occurred.

Post failure analysis

Materials

The properties used for simulation are often quite general within groups of materials and not specific to the simulation software. However, with Simulia there are additional parameters for groups of materials like elastomers, concrete and composites. This additional definition gives us the ability to find some cool results like delamination of a composite, concrete cracking strain and advanced applications for elastomers shown below.

Advanced applications for elastomers

Drop Test

When it comes to drop tests, the Simulia tool set offers much greater capabilities. Within SOLIDWORKS, we are somewhat limited on the types of situations we can test. SOLIDWORKS Simulation includes either dropping geometry from a height, or specified speed. Whereas with the Simulia tool set, we can test for more situations such as high-speed impacts with high levels of self-contact or extreme deformations.

Simulia drop test

Multibody

Multibody dynamic studies are a massive addition to our simulation capabilities. Simulia users have expanded capability in the automotive industry, rail systems, wind turbines, or anything with bearings, gears, belts and tires. This simulation process can include finding the loads, calculating the durability of your parts, and then optimizing your workflows to run studies more efficiently.

Multibody dynamic studies

Whether you have a simple or complex simulation problem, TriMech offers a solution that can fit your needs from basic linear static problems to multibody dynamic study. Thanks to the technical team at Adaptive, we have experts in all topics covered in this article, so if you have any questions please reach out! The team at Adaptive also has specialists in tools for electromagnetics, so look out for content on that subject in the future!