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New Autodesk products bring simulation capabilities to composites

Whether you need to perform a quick, "back of the envelope" analysis of the composite materials in your design or an in-depth, NASA-grade, multi-scale analysis of the composite, Autodesk has two new solutions to help.

A series of new simulation products, Autodesk Simulation Composite Design and Autodesk Simulation Composite Analysis, are available for the first time, providing users with an easy way to analyze the performance of composite materials. Both products represent a rebranded, upgraded, and enhanced version of the Firehole Composites technology that Autodesk purchased earlier this year.

The result? Customers in industries ranging from aerospace and automotive to industrial and consumer products can create highly realistic and accurate composite simulations, which are increasingly important as these industries move toward composites as a way of building lighter, stronger products.

Autodesk Simulation Composite Design is geared toward preliminary design. It gives users a desktop-based tool that combines an extensive materials database, functionality for laminate design, and analysis features for simplified structures, allowing users to easily perform a basic analysis of their design.

Autodesk Simulation Composite Analysis is a more full-featured product that allows users to perform advanced nonlinear analysis of composite parts, gaining a much better prediction of structural integrity and progressive failure response. Newly added features include the ability to perform progressive fatigue simulation and simulation capability for advanced woven composites.

Additionally, NASA-developed LaRC02 failure criteria have been added, giving users another option to analyze possible failures within their composite parts.

Autodesk Simulation Composite Analysis works as a plug-in to industry-standard nonlinear FEA packages such as Abaqus from Dassault Systemes and ANSYS. All currently supported FEA platforms will continue to be supported.

More details about the Autodesk Simulation Composite products, including availability and pricing information, can be found here.

Source: Autodesk

Published August 2013

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