What’s New in 3DExperience 2024x – Structures Simulations Part II

In continuation with the previous blog, we will cover the 3DExperience structural scenario and durability updates in this session. The updates included in this session are from 2023xFD01 to 2024xGA. There have been numerous enhancements. To keep the blog more readable, it has been divided into designer and analyst level enhancements in this blog followed by results and durability enhancements in the next blog.  

Scenario Apps – Designers: Only available in designer-based roles.

• Improved contact robustness: The contact initialization tool UI has been modified to capture offsets as a default to fix initial overclosures. Designers may not visualize the effect of offsets on penetration. This update would prevent them from making such a modeling error.                                    2023xFD01

• Edit from Assistant Panel: The assistant panel has been the heart and soul for modeling in designer-based roles. The user relies mostly on assistant panel to build the model. However, any review or correction from the panel was not possible. The new release allows the user to open feature manager from the assistant panel thereby enhancing productivity.                                                              2023xFD01

• Thermal Outputs: More thermal outputs have been added for results interpretation. These include the thermal heat flux vector components and the reaction flux.                                             2023xFD01

• Changes to solve process: This section is not the right place to mention this feature but if it’s there, I need to mention. This update is not applicable to SRD, GDE, IME and FMK roles. All FEM and Results update checks are deferred until the job is submitted to the solver. It is now possible to see the out-of-date models or results without submitting a job. Moreover, in case of multiple load cases, all the cases that are up to date would not be resolved during the solve process.                                          2023xFD01

• Default Licensing Preferences: With the arrival of SRU tokens and credits in the 3DExperience platform, the licensing feature has been updated that allows user to choose between QXT, SET and SRU tokens or to choose between tokens and credits to solve the model.                                    2023xFD02

• Progress Indicators: In case of local-noninteractive and remote solve, the UI is unlocked from the job for work on other models. More indicators have been added to notify the user about the ongoing simulation such as save progress and other simulation status features. Improved performance when importing simulations with millions of diagnostic messages during solve.                                 2023xFD03

• Dealing with locked objects: If submitted simulation includes a locked part or assembly, the simulation aborts. The user experience has been enhanced to notify the user with the appropriate message. The solver tries to save the locked objects. If it fails, the save operation is performed again. On successive failures. The solver aborts with the error message.                                                                         2023xFD04

• Unrestrained mode detection: Unrestrained mode detection and animation is now possible in linear static perturbation procedure in all roles. In designer roles, these modes are treated as errors that must be rectified. In the analyst roles, these modes can be retained in simulation results, if needed. Perhaps, the designer roles do not want analysts to keep these modes.                                       2024xGA

Scenario Apps – Analysts: Only available in analyst-based roles.

• History Plots for Contact: For General Contact in Abaqus Standard, the history output for contact variables is now supported. Moreover, the internal improvements in nonlinear penalty contact provides better convergence.                                                                                                         2023xFD01
• General Contact Enhancements: The control assignment section of general contact now allows for pairwise contact overclosure resolution. General contact also allows to define contact mass scaling by picking geometric entities as support.                                                                                         2023xFD01
• Contact Exclusion: In general contact, it’s now possible to deactivate or reactivate a contact by using surface exclusion and inclusion. Can be applied to multiple regions at the same time.         2023xFD01

• Surface Usability: The surfaces that are used as support in either loads or contact pairs can now be flipped using the contextual menu available in the support field. It’s a great feature to easily flip the orientation of surfaces in large and complex models without tempering with visibility of features.                                                                                                                                        2023xFD01

• Variable Beam Loads: The distributed loads on beam loads are now supported using DLOAD user subroutine.                                                                                                                                               2023xFD01
• Battery Simulation Workflow: I believe this enhancement has been mentioned before as well. The 3DExperience as well as Standalone Abaqus now support coupled electrochemical-structural-thermal-pore pressure step to simulate all aspects of battery electrochemistry. The battery manufacturers can use it to optimize the battery degradation during charging cycles. The material definition app supports all the necessary material properties required to simulate ion concentrations, swelling, thermal run away etc.                                                                        2023xFD02
• Loads Glyph Size: Users understand the problem of fixed size load arrows. With zoom-in and zoom-out operations, the size of arrows relative to the model may not be appropriate. The variable scaling feature has been introduced to adjust the size of force and torque arrows with zooming operation.                                                                                                                                              2023xFD03

• Additional Physics: The quasi-static step has been introduced in coupled thermal structural simulations. This allows us to capture time dependent material behavior, if required. The follower force option has also been included.                                                                                             2023xFD04
• Fluid Pressure Penetration: This feature has been introduced in the 3DExperience platform to simulate the fluid leakage phenomenon such as in car door seals and valves. It’s a classical PPEN parameter of the DSLOAD Abaqus keyword now available in 3DX.                        2023xFD04
• Solution Control: These are the advanced solver features only to be used as last resort in case of convergence problems. Changing these values can provide inaccurate results. 3DX now offers access to these parameters through its user interface.                                                               2024xGA

Tire Analysis workflow: Abaqus has been used for ages in the tire industry due to its outstanding capability in elastomer modeling with reinforcements. Tire modeling workflow is now fully mature in 3DX with features such as rebar layers, embedded elements, axisymmetric elements with twist, symmetric model generation, UAMP subroutine and transport velocity.                                       2024xGA