Altair Supports Aerospace Innovation with HyperWorks

Altair will exhibit the latest version of its HyperWorks CAE solution at the Aircraft Interiors Expo 2014 next week.

According to the company, aircraft manufacturers are using the suite for weight reduction and design with composites; modern structural modeling and automated design processes; and stress, mechanism and vulnerability simulation. Software tools in the integrated HyperWorks suite are accelerating the adoption of advanced materials, such as laminated composites, to meet industry goals of reducing the weight of components and structures for greater fuel efficiency and passenger comfort, Altair says.

“While composites are a major focal point for HyperWorks and the aviation industry, our product suite offers much more,” said Shan Nageswaran, senior director, Altair HyperWorks for Aerospace. “From automated meshing to groundbreaking optimization tools and a wide range of easily accessed partner applications, HyperWorks is helping the aerospace industry reach new heights in time efficiency, cost reduction and quality improvement all while meeting the strictest safety and performance requirements.”

For composites, HyperMesh can save time via its modeling process. Composites data may be read from the computer-aided design (CAD) model, with ply shapes and parameters comprehended and effortlessly mapped onto elements. HyperMesh also has the ability to convert from ply to zone-based modeling for solvers that do not natively support ply-based modeling.

HyperView provides layer-based post-processing for composites, yielding results for both individual layers and the aggregation of layers and identifying the maximum contributing layer. The module also includes predefined criteria, including industry standard composite failure theories, and allows for invoking in-house codes for further manipulation of these results.

OptiStruct is a state-of-the-art solver with non-linear capabilities for ply-based modeling. It offers size optimization for dimensioning of structural components, as well as topology optimization to substantially reduce weight by determining the ideal material distribution.

HyperMesh’s new aerospace profile contains tools targeted especially for the aerospace industry. The HyperView result math module is a tool that enables users to conduct analysis with their results. An average may be calculated between two stress results, for example, or a more sophisticated math function employed from the library to derive a new result from the existing results.

The suite’s RADIOSS solver, MotionSolve multi-body dynamics solver, and HyperStudy sensitivity analysis tool have also been used in aerospace applications.

For more information, visit Altair.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.