Benchmarking Commercial FEA Suites, Gathering User Requirements

[msjoey]

Good day everyone.

First of all I'd like to note that the "what is the best FEA program" question has been discussed to death in eng-tips and yes I have read the older threads
But it would be great if those who answer my survey can include their experience working with different commercial FEA software

Anyway, the main question: in my working life so far I have used ABAQUS and HyperWorks mostly, briefly ANSYS and NX Nastran. I have never been in a position where I have to make the decision of which FEA software to buy and install for my department... until now. So here I am, given free rein by my manager and the technical director and I get to set the budget (but I don't want to go crazy with the shopping money). What I have done is

build a weighted decision matrix with all the software options,
contacted the licensed distributors with my team's requirements + received suggested configurations with price quotes,
prepared a spreadsheet detailing all FEA configurations capabilities costs.​

My next step is to make a list of all user requirements, categorizing each as "Essential" "Important" or "Desirable".
My list of user requirements so far reads like this:

The FEA software shall interface with CAD models from Catia V5 - Essential
The FEA software shall interface with CAD models from suppliers (stp, iges) - Important
The FEA software shall solve linear analysis - Essential
The FEA software shall solve nonlinear analysis - Essential
... etc etc...​

Here is where I would like to gather input from experienced FEA users in this group (especially those who are also responsible for maintaining the FEA system in their company and / or interface with IT support). What would your user requirements be as a technical person who either uses FEA or expect analysis results from the FEA engineer? Please state if you are a design engineer, FE analyst, or engineering manager. You don't have to use formal sentences as per my examples. I just want to run a survey of what different groups of internal customers expect from an FEA system.

I am concurrently running a similar survey with my company's engineering design team. Background: we are a defense company and our FEA target is to run vehicle crash, blast and ballistic, occupant safety, thermal radiation analysis in the near future.

Thanks in advance,
Jo

 

[rstupplebeen]

It will be very use case specific so I will speak to "FEA target is to run vehicle crash, blast and ballistic, occupant safety, thermal radiation analysis in the near future."
explicit analysis (time domain)
large deformations
non-linear material properties
robust contact
dummy models
basic thermal analysis
damage propagation such as XFEM or element deletion

I hope this helps.



Rob Stupplebeen

http://www.optimaldevice.com

https://sites.google.com/site/robertkstupplebeen/

 

[msjoey]

Rob,

Thanks for the pointers! I'm adding damage propagation and element birth / death to my list. Yes admittedly my "survey" is user-specific for my organization but I'm casting my net wider so as to not miss out on general trends (this will be our first FEA software other than GPS / GAS in Catia V5).

What FEA software are you using now and what are your thoughts on them?

cheers
Jo

 

[rstupplebeen]

Jo,

Over the years I have used: Abaqus (CAE, Standard, Explicit), Ansys (Classic, WorkBench), MSC (Patran, Nastran, Dytran, MARC), SolidWorks Simulation (Cosmos), Mechanica and Femap. I have modeled: large deformation, contact, fibrous composites, fracture mechanics, frequency, shock, ballistics, drop testing, hyper-elasticity and probably others. My strong preference over the years has been Abaqus. So much so that I have become an Abaqus VAR.

Having a score card is a great way to organize your needs and wants. One of my customers had a list of several generic use cases that he used to evaluate the various codes. I would use your list from before: vehicle crash, blast and ballistic, occupant safety, thermal radiation. Create simple cases such as a sphere penetrating a plate for ballistics. Create the geometry in your CAD system and provide neutral formats such as STEP. Some cases such as 'thermal radiation' may not need a use case and simply be a check box.

I hope this helps.

Rob

Rob Stupplebeen

http://www.optimaldevice.com

https://sites.google.com/site/robertkstupplebeen/

 

[rb1957]

if you're comfortable with one code, IMO you need a really good reason to change ... Everyone will bitch like heck at having to relearn stuff.

if people don't like some features with your current code, then that's something to address.

maybe your current code isn't being updated ... again something to address.

maybe you can keep the same pre- and post-processor, and "just" change the analysis engine underneath ? much less bitching ...

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[msjoey]

Greetings Rob, rb1957.

I'm a fan of Abaqus myself, and together with Python scripting I know from experience it totally rocks. Looking across my benchmarking spreadsheet however I can see that its price is significantly higher than the rest on our list (HyperWoks, NX, Ansys, MSC). Hence my effort in documenting my decision making steps to justify the investment. I will use the user requirements to fine tune the weighting system in my decision matrix.

That said I am open to learning other FEA software if they're robust enough to solve our problems. My hesitation in shamelessly plugging Abaqus to our CTO is : I have used it to model hyperelasticity, contact analysis and mold systems (heat stress) but not for vehicle crash. Our business is military vehicles and that's what I need to focus on.

Also, I am told that LS-Dyna is great with blast + ballistics which I've never worked on before (but I'm excited to!!!). Our consultants who are doing blast / occupant safety for us at the moment also use LS-Dyna (with Ansys). My experience with LS-Dyna is validating seat belt + child seat anchorages (models prepared in HyperMesh).

So I'm wondering if we can just use LS-Dyna for our current needs. Except that I hate working with Ansys ... and so does the other FEA guy (there's only the two of us doing FEA for now).

BTW rb1957, your reply is somewhat cryptic...

cheers
Jo

 

[mechanicklsss]

msjoey ...
Short Answer : Use LS-Dyna (Solver ) + Hypermesh (Pre & Post Processing)
Long Answer : I made a video just for you on youtube ...
watch the whole thing... 1 hour 53 minutes
I hope this will clear your head...
and let me know if you need anything else...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH6QIg4Dt2o

 

[mechanicklsss]

msjoey ...
Short Answer : Use LS-Dyna (Solver ) + Hypermesh (Pre & Post Processing)
Long Answer : I made a video just for you on youtube ...
watch the whole thing... 1 hour 53 minutes
I hope this will clear your head...
and let me know if you need anything else...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH6QIg4Dt2o

Surya Prakash Kanakapally

http://www.facebook.com/DakshMechanical

https://plus.google.com/+Dakshmechanical

http://www.dakshmech.com