Product News

November 16, 1999

ANSYS Introduces ANSYS 5.6 Software

SOUTHPOINTE, PA, Nov. 10 -- ANSYS, Inc., a provider of advanced simulation applications for CAE, has announced the release of ANSYS 5.6. This latest revision of the ANSYS software family is designed to deliver "state-of-the-art" simulation to many engineering disciplines, with particular emphasis in nonlinear structural mechanics and coupled-field multiphysics.

"ANSYS 5.6 positions the company as a leading provider of nonlinear analysis capabilities," said Dr. Marc Halpern of D.H. Brown Associates, Inc., a research and consulting firm for the information industry. "The new software incorporates major enhancements for modeling contact, plasticity, creep, and elastomeric material behavior along with significant advances to the solver options. All industries can benefit from these developments combined with ANSYS, Inc.'s existing core."

According to ANSYS, nonlinear structural mechanics capabilities offer many new material models for the simulation of metals, elastomers, and polymers. Material laws that work with the new family of solid, shell, and beam elements have been created to allow for simulations using either implicit or explicit ANSYS solver technology. In addition, said the company, enhanced automatic solution controls allow for complex nonlinear structural simulations that combine multi-body contact, large deformation, large strain, and creep behavior.

ANSYS added that coupled-field emphasis expands the abilities of their flagship ANSYS/Multiphysics^TM product to handle demanding modeling environments from industries developing micromachines or MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) devices. Version 5.6 is designed to deliver a comprehensive electrostatic-structural solution, yielding capacitance results that are utilized by circuit-simulation packages. ANSYS 5.6 also includes electrostatic p elements, mesh-morphing, far-field effects, capacitance matrix output, and a family of electromechanical circuit elements designed to allow for the rapid simulation of coupled-field transients.

"Electrostatic-structural coupling joins many other possibilities for coupled-field simulation that are now becoming mandatory in the design of various electrical devices ranging from cellular phones to miniature MEMS devices only micrometers in length," said Frank Marx, manager of the ANSYS Business Unit.

Other ANSYS 5.6 enhancements include:

• a new radiation formulation for heat transfer;
• a volume of fluid capability designed to handle free surface effects for computation of fluid dynamics;
• a complex eigensolver for dynamic systems;
• shell rezoning for highly deformed explicit dynamic solutions;
• several new features for meshing complex volumes.

Complementing the nonlinear mechanics features available in the ANSYS/Mechanical^TM and ANSYS/Structural^TM products is the new pretension element. According to ANSYS, this feature allows users to precisely create and model bolted joint assemblies with either force or displacement loadings to pull the components together. This capability is useful in analyzing general fastener assemblies, including rivets, said the company.