What’s new in Abaqus CAE 2019

Posted on January 10, 2019 by Ankur Kumar Leave a comment

Every year around this time, SIMULIA comes up with official declaration of new releases. That news is followed by discussion and buzzes around new functionalities and features. Last year we released a series of blog articles on new features in 2018 suite of products and we are following a similar pattern this year starting with Abaqus CAE.

Translation of parts and instances: Additional parameters have been introduced to ease this operation. Earlier CAE prompted to pick a start and end points to define direction vector. Now it possible to define the direction by picking global or local coordinate axis, datum axis as well as any straight edge. Moreover, the start and end point method is supplemented by a local coordinate system, if needed. Here is how user interface looks like:
CAE support for CAXA/SAXA element types: CAXA/SAXA element types are very useful in modeling structures that have axisymmetric geometry but not axisymmetric load. These element types are present in solver since long time but only option to use them was through manual keyword input. Now these element types are part of Abaqus CAE.
Optimization enhancement for additive manufacturing: Overhands can be difficult to print and they require support structures as well. It is advisable not to have overhand structures in the part subjected to AM process. Now an additional geometric restriction is available in optimization module of CAE to prevent overhangs formation.
Other optimization enhancements:
Shape optimization is often used after topology optimization to reduce hotspots. Earlier only controller based algorithm was supported for shape optimization that imposed many restrictions on choice of design responses. Now sensitivity based algorithm is also available in CAE for shape optimization. Moreover, for all types of optimization schemes, it is not possible to export the output in IGES format as well. Earlier this output feature was available only in form based native TOSCA GUI.
The envelop contours can not be created for complex stress values as well. Three types of complex stress contours are supported as shown below:
Another significant enhancement in viewer is the visualization of variable beam radius. This is applicable to the output of TOSCA sizing when beam elements are present in the structure. The name of field variable is BRADIUS.