Altair Manufacturing Solver 2024 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: New non-uniform voxel mesh generation
Metal Casting: Improved accuracy and performance of models containing voxel-meshed molds
Injection Molding: Rigorous validation for both detailed 3D and fast 3D molding solutions
3DP - Powder Bed Fusion: Significant performance improvements for the body-fitted solution and accuracy improvements of the coarse thermal solver

Additive Manufacturing (3DP for Powder Bed Fusion)

New Features

New support element formulation for body-fitted analysis: A new element formulation based on finite cells is implemented and they more accurately real stiffness of the support. These improved elements accurately simulate the support conditions with larger element sizes. They also allow mapping the results of the simulation onto the original support geometry for clearer visualization of the simulation output. (AMSLVR-869)
New iterative linear solvers for body-fitted analysis of large models: New iterative linear solvers designed to be efficient for solving large models using quadratic elements are now available for body-fitted analysis. Of these, the deflated conjugate gradient solver significantly reduces calculation time and memory usage for larger problems (typically over one million degrees of freedom). This is an upcoming feature and requires more testing. (AMSLVR-844)

Enhancements

Supporting layer lumping for body-fitted inherent strain solution: Layer lumping is Altair’s proprietary technology that estimates the effect of layer-by-layer deposition when combining multiple physical layers and activating them in a single time step. This allows for using coarser meshes while maintaining reasonable accuracy. This technology was developed for a voxel-based inherent strain solution and has been extended to apply to the body-fitted solution in this release. Extensive validation has been done to ensure the accuracy of this approach. (AMSLVR-707) (AMSLVR-679)

Metal Casting

Enhancements

Improved component classification modeler: The previous component classification did not maintain the surface condition attached to its original parent element. This was causing issues, especially when computing tracer ID with runners. This has been resolved by forcing the surface conditions to always be attached to their original elements. (AMSLVR-876)
Improved performance of mold-side calculations: Some enhancements have been implemented in the local matrix computations to improve the mold-side calculation time and this is significant when voxel meshes are used for the mold.

Resolved Issues

Geometrical modulus computations getting stuck under certain circumstances: Under some situations, the geometrical modulus calculations might enter an infinite loop and get stuck there. This internal error is now resolved. (AMSLVR-868)
Fixed initial time step calculation in the demolding stage: When the demolding stage's initial temperature was too close to the ambient temperature it may have caused the initial time step calculation to become negative and cause the solver to exit with an error message. This issue is resolved now. (AMSLVR-927)

Injection Molding

The injection molding solver has three complementing solutions addressing the whole 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.

Enhancements

Improved injection boundary condition during packing: The pressure condition applied at the injection BC during the packing simulation is improved. This change leads to a more accurate representation of what happens on the shop floor. (AMSLVR-899)
Better prediction of pressure release time: During packing, simulation pressure is held constant at the injection BC for a specified time. After this hold time, pressure is released, and the pressure decay starts in the cavity. The solver is enhanced to accurately predict this pressure release point by adjusting the timestep near hold time. (AMSLVR-822)
Warpage prediction based on residual stress model: A residual stress model is used to predict warpage. In this model, the solver considers in-mold stress due to freezing and thermal stresses arising from non-uniform temperature distribution as the part cools from the transition temperature to the room temperature during warpage calculations. (AMSLR-897)

Fast Solver New Features

Warpage: An elastoplastic constitutive model has been added to the fast solver, leading to an accurate, fast and robust warpage prediction. (AMSLVR-792) (AMSLVR-860)

Fast Solver Enhancements

Improved Rheology: The solution when the temperature approaches the no flow temperature has been improved. This change has significantly enhanced the accuracy of the pressure prediction, especially in semicrystalline polymers. (AMSLVR-782)
Improved pressure drop prediction in runners: The solution in the runner system has been significantly improved, taking into account the correct geometry of the runners. (AMSLVR-789)
Improved mass conservation during filling: Mass conservation has been enhanced, leading to a more accurate prediction of the fill time. ( AMSLVR-592)
Improved surface temperature: The temperature of the boundaries has been enhanced, leading to a more accurate prediction. (AMSLVR-808)
Improved min dt in filling stage: The minimum time step has been improved, leading to more accurate results in fast injections. (CMG-2378)
Improved prediction of the Temperature at fill time: The computation of the temperature when a region has just been filled has been improved. (AMSLVR-921)
Improved density results on the surface: The contour fill on the surface has been improved, to represent the surface density instead of the average elemental density. (AMSLVR-786)
Temperature bugfix when switching from fill to pack: No longer changes between stages. (AMSLVR-791)
Improvements in the packing equations: The equations governing the compressible flow have been rewritten to increase accuracy and robustness. (AMSLVR-802)