Altair Manufacturing Solver 2023.1 Release Notes
General
Altair Manufacturing Solver is a state-of-the-art solver suite for manufacturing
applications built on a parallel, modular, and extensible framework that is suitable
for simulations of manufacturing processes. This release contains solutions for the
following modules.
- Additive Manufacturing
- Injection Molding
- Metal Casting
- Polymer Material Data Analytics
- Compose Molding Toolkit
Highlights
Highlights of this release include:
- Metal Casting: A new trimming stage to predict and visualize the distortion of the trimmed part
- Metal Casting: A new super fast thermal analysis
- Compose Molding Toolkit: A plenty of new features including a Multiscale Designer forward characterization for short discontinuous fibers
Additive Manufacturing (3DP for SLM)
Resolved Issues
- Resolved Solver Crash for Voxel-based Inherent Strain Solver
- There was a reported issue regarding the voxel-based inherent strain solver when the activation thickness is mismatched with the voxel height in the build direction resulting in a silent solver crash. The issue has been fixed in this release by adjusting the activation thickness. (INP-2041)
Metal Casting
New Features
- New Trimming Stage
- A new trimming stage has been added after demolding analysis to predict the final distortion and stresses after selected components (typically overflows, runners, and risers) are trimmed from the part. (AMSLVR-838)
- Fast Thermal Analysis (Beta Feature)
- A very fast thermal analysis has been implemented to compute a simplified solidification problem in a few seconds (typically around 10 s), using only an STL of the geometry and the material of the part as input. This new solver computes the solid fraction evolution, the geometrical modulus, and the porosity hotspots. For this calculation, solid components such as mold or cores, might be considered or not. (AMSLVR-770, AMSLVR-771)
Enhancements
- Improvements in Demolding with Thermomechanical Analysis
- Enhancements are made to demolding analysis to improve results such as the symmetry. Now the solver is constraining the node that is closest to the center of the whole metal cavity (including all components such as runners, overflows, etc.), instead of fixing the center of the part that might be far away from the actual center of the domain. (AMSLVR-766)
- Improvements in the Contact Finding Algorithm Inside the Voxel Mesher
- A new algorithm has been introduced to improve the detection of faces on the part side that are in contact with the components on the voxel side. The new algorithm now favors the faces that are aligned and closer. (AMSLVR-854)
Resolved Issues
- Timestep Size During the Demolding Stage
- During the demolding stage, the timestep size could increase without an upper bound. This issue is now resolved. The solver will now consider the initial and final temperatures to set a reasonable maximum time step. (AMSLVR-781)
- Voxel Mesher Crash When the Part is in contact with the Ambient
- The voxel mesher crashes under some conditions when the part is in contact with the ambient. This issue is resolved in this release. (AMSLVR-852)
Injection Molding (3D)
The injection molding solver has three complementing solutions addressing the
spectrum of needs of injection molding CAE:
- Detailed 3D - Requires four or more layers of mesh through the thickness. This is denoted as 3D.
- Fast 3D - Also known as Hybrid 3D, it is a powerful solution that requires only one layer of mesh through the thickness.
- Shell - Requires only a surface mesh to compute the solution.
All these solvers use the Inspire Mold interface. The updates are presented in the order of Shell, Fast 3D, and 3D. Refer to the Inspire Mold Release Notes for what is available in the interface. There are no new updates in this release.
Composite Molding Toolkit
New Features
- Access to Applications and Key Workflows via Pull-downs in Compose
- Applications and key workflows will now be accessed via a set of pull-downs in the Compose User Interface when the library is loaded.
- Added Multiscale Designer Forward Characterization for Short Discontinuous Fibers
- A Python library is included with the new API library, the "Molding Toolkit Multiscale Designer Fiber Tools" and with it, you can create a kind of "solver deck" in Python that imports the mtk_md_fibertools.py file, defines the material and sets the state conditions for a forward characterization using short fibers and assuming that the fibers are made from an isotropic material as well as the polymer matrix. It uses the Tait parameters for Specific Volume and Poisson Function parameters to generate the elastic isotropic properties used for the characterization. The toolkit creates the unit cell model, sets up the files for driving Multiscale Designer, and then runs Multiscale Designer in batch mode.
- Batch Processing for Viscosity Fitter
- A means to perform batch processing with the viscosity fitter has been added and with it, a User Interface tool (GUI) to build the batch list file in CSV format. (AMSLVR-0824)
- Initial Python API for Batch Processing of Viscosity Data
- An api folder has been added that contains the file, mtk_api.py, that has functions designed to run Compose in batch mode so as to access the capabilities. In this first release, the batch process for the Viscosity Fitter is implemented. The Python function takes in variables that are used as command inputs to denote the path and file name for the batch process file. There is an OML side to the api because Compose-Batch Mode will need to load the "Molding Toolkit" library in order to access the functions. (AMSLVR-0824)
- General Polynomial Model to Viscosity Fitting (Standalone) for HyperXtrude
- Added a standalone General Polynomial Viscosity Fitter that fits viscosity data to polynomial functions for each temperature set. The functions compute the natural log of the viscosity versus the natural log of the shear rate and are reported back in order of increasing exponent. An mtl file is generated with text formatted for HyperXtrude. This can be copy-pasted into the deck for running. Polynomials can be up to 5th order and the first 4 temperature sets are used in the event that more are present. Partially resolves (AMSLVR-0828).
- Workflow to Extract Specific Volume Data Set for an Unfilled Polymer from a Filled Short Fiber Composite
- A workflow has been added in the pull-down menu to extract a specific volume data set from the tested short discontinuous fiber composite using the specific volume parameters for the fiber used in the composite. The use of this in Multiscale Designer assumes that the polymer matrix is thermoplastic and isotropic. This toolkit currently only supports the elastic domain for this fitting. This extracted data set is then fit for Tait parameters in a subsequent step and can then be used for forward characterization in with the Multiscale Designer Fiber Tools Python library. (AMSLVR-0832)
Enhancements
- Option for Shear Moduli to the Polymer Fitter
- A switch has been added to the Polymer Fitter to allow for Shear Moduli versus Temperature to be used for Poisson Function fitting. (AMSLVR-0826)
- Special CSV Report for Viscosity Fitter for Batch Process Fitting
- A revised version of the CSV report from the Viscosity Fitter has been added for batch processing (via OML or Python). Importing the results into PMDA and subsequently AMDC will be much easier. (AMSLVR-0825)
Resolved Issues
- Some ABS Data Sets Crashing Viscosity Fitter
- The Carreau-Yasuda algorithm was crashing the viscosity fitter with some ABS and other Styrenic data sets. This has been resolved. (AMSLVR-0850)