New Products
Engineer's Studio(R)
Ver. 1.06.00
  Ver.up
3D Plate Dynamic Nonlinear Analysis

Price: US$3,300(Base)/Free revision up
Release date: December 2010
Dynamic Nonlinear Analysis

 Introduction
In Engineer's Studio(R) Ver 1.06.00, the following three functions have been added/improved. All of them are the features for free revision up.

  • Solver
  • Plate Element Input & Output
  • User interface performance for large models

 Solver
The PARDISO(Parallel Direct Solver) Sparse Matrix Solver (supported by the Intel MKL library) has been implemented in the solver. PARADISO was originally developed by the University of Basel, Switzerland. It greatly increases the performance of the solver on large models. Memory usage is significantly reduced and calculation times are significantly improved .For example, a 45000 node model (plate elements, material nonlinear, static analysis, 50 steps) (Figure1) uses 3GB of memory compared with 20GB in the previous version. This model calculates in 30 minutes compared with 20 hours in the previous version. Eigen analysis uses less than 1GB of memory whereas the previous version required memory amounts beyond the limits of typically available desktop PCs and could not run. This model calculates in one minute compared with an estimated two hours in the previous version if memory had been available. This new feature in conjunction with the previously released 64 bit solver option has significantly increased the model size capabilities (number of nodes) of Engineers Studio. Plate element models typically generate larger node counts than frame element models. The PARADISO solver performs excellently over the full range of model sizes typically found in Engineers Studio.

The initial stiffness of the asymmetric bilinear spring has been changed from zero to the primary stiffness. This spring type is typically used to model bilinear soil to concrete structure interactions and with this improvement the model will now be stable in its initial state. This means that the boundary conditions for the whole model can be described by only the soil/structure interaction and previous remedies such as dummy springs of small stiffness are no longer necessary.
The previous restriction of 1000 child nodes per rigid body element has been removed. There is no restriction now.

Figure1 45000 node model

 Plate Element Input & Output
A new generator command was added to quickly create distributed nonlinear springs over surface areas of plate elements. Soil property profiles including layer thickness and stiffness (kN/m3) are input and all required spring definitions, spring elements, nodes and support conditions are automatically generated at each node of the plate elements selected.(Figure2a, b). This involves the integration of the stiffness over the element shape to produce equivalent node stiffness values. These integrals are calculated and the required spring definitions automatically generated.
A new feature was added to the plate element loading feature. Offsets from the sides of the loaded region are now possible. This gives control in 2D over the surface and enables partial loading completely within a single element. (Figure3)

Maxima for contour plots of the results of plate elements are now prepared per user defined group (Figure4). Previous versions stored and reported the maxima for contour plots over the whole model. Fibre strain results for fibre elements are now prepared per group to give consistent treatment of strain results between plate elements and fibre elements. A new delete function was added to the edit window of the plate element "mesh element editor". Now when multiple primitives are selected by the mouse they can be deleted by the delete button or from the right click menu delete option. The option to delete unused nodes after deleting primitives is also included in the new command.
Improvements to the plate element creation from outlines were done. Now nodes in existing elements can be optionally included in the mesh creation of the new element. This permits much easier building of a correctly connected model. The result of load case combinations are now shown for the contour figures of plate element models.

Figure2a Ground spring automatic generator Figure2b Input of soil stiffness property


Figure3 Bilateral offset function of plate loads Figure4 Contour Figure per grouop

 User interface performance for large models
Large plate element models typically require much higher node counts than beam models. Many improvements have been made to improve the response of the user interface on large models. Models of around 45000 nodes are now manipulated with ease.

In models with many load steps and many cells in a fibre section, the display of the fibre section results was very slow. Improvements have been made. This data caused performance problems when reading and writing files.

The process speed of the following items is improved.
  • Input window access from [Input navigation]
  • Result display of frame element
  • Improved speed of 3D model drawing
  • Range selection of a large number of nodes and element
  • Result display of fibre element
  • Reduced size of input data file
  • Improved speed of file loading
Figure5 Image of Engineer's Studio(R)
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