ANSYS Engineering Simulation Software Search Main menu Skip to primary content Skip to secondary content Home Visit ANSYS.com Industries Academic Aerospace & Defense Automotive Electronics Healthcare Internet of Things Oil & Gas Turbomachinery Products Fluid Dynamics Electronics Structural Analysis Systems Multiphysics Tips & Tricks Post navigation ← Older posts Bladeless Propulsion System Developed to Replace Propellers Posted on September 22, 2017 by Guest Blogger John Mohyi Reply For over 100 years, propellers have been the propulsion method of choice for aircraft, helicopter, and boat manufacturers. With the rise of multi-rotor technology, the limitations of this ancient method of propulsion have placed a glass ceiling on emerging industries such as drone delivery and “flying cars.” Besides the obvious safety issues, the faster that a blade rotates the more inefficient it becomes at transferring energy into thrust. A key reason for this upper limit on economies of RPM is that the faster a blade spins, the more prominent the vortex geometry becomes in the mass flow, which is parasitic to propulsion. This constrains both payload and range. Continue reading → Posted in ANSYS Startup Program | Tagged aircraft, ANSYS CFX, flow geometry, flying cars | Leave a reply New Version of ANSYS Mechanical – New Capabilities Posted on September 21, 2017 by Richard Mitchell 2 Engineering is a pretty exciting place to be right now. There seems to be amazing news about new products and technologies being tested and released nearly every day. ANSYS 18.2 just launched and it’s packed with cool stuff. ANSYS Mechanical has a raft of new capabilities to help engineers make new technologies a reality. I’m amazed at some of the commercial space industry achievements going on right now and of course, being a big car fan, the technology going into the automotive sector is just incredible. In order to bring these products to market, big changes are taking place in the companies designing these products. More efforts are being put into every aspect of product design and the drive to build better products faster means increased pressure on engineers. Continue reading → Posted in Structural Analysis | Tagged high-performance computing, topology optimization, vibroacoustic simulations | 2 Replies Improving Smoked Food with Simulation Posted on September 19, 2017 by John Graham 1 Smoking meat (and other food) in a barbecue smoker doesn’t sound complicated, but there are more factors at work in producing delicious food than you would expect. Barbecue enthusiast Travis Jacobs, president of Jacobs Analytics, was aware that in windy conditions the air flow through the bottom inlets and the top outlet vents of a smoker can be variable, leading to internal temperature gradients and swirling air that removes smoke and makes a less savory product. He wanted to make a smoker that could smoke food to perfection in any conditions. Unlike most of us non-engineer weekend barbecuers, he turned to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to solve this problem. Continue reading → Posted in Fluid Dynamics, General | Tagged ANSYS SpaceClaim Direct Modeler, ANSYS Startup Program, CFD, consumer goods, digital exploration, fluids | 1 Reply Topology Optimization in ANSYS 18.1 – Motorcycle Component Example Posted on September 14, 2017 by Guest Blogger Ted Harris Reply If you’re not familiar with topological or topology optimization, a simple description is that we are using the physics of the problem combined with the finite element computational method to decide what the optimal shape is for a given design space and set of loads and constraints. Typically our goal is to maximize stiffness while reducing weight. We may also be trying to keep maximum stress below a certain value. Frequencies can come into play as well by linking a modal analysis to a topology optimization. Why is topology optimization important? First, it produces shapes which may be more optimal than we could determine by engineering intuition coupled with trial and error. Second, with the rise of additive manufacturing, it is now much easier and more practical to produce the often complex and organic looking shapes which come out of a topological optimization. Continue reading → Posted in Guest Blogs, Structural Analysis | Tagged 3D printing, ANSYS Mechanical, ANSYS SpaceClaim | Leave a reply Powering Devices with Vibration Posted on September 13, 2017 by Richard Mitchell Reply Vibration in terms of simulation, for me at least, immediately makes me think of vehicles and larger structures: ride comfort in cars, the incredible forces caused by vibration that equipment on rockets see and rotating machinery. These are all obvious areas that our customers use simulation to help understand the effects of vibration. It seems that designers of much, much smaller devices are also very interested in vibration. Continue reading → Posted in Structural Analysis | Tagged ANSYS Mechanical, ANSYS Startup Program, Energy, IIoT, IoT, railway, ReVibe Energy, sensors | Leave a reply Antenna-to-Environment Interaction Insights with Visual Ray Tracing Posted on September 11, 2017 by Shawn Carpenter Reply When preparing for a business or personal trip, most of us want to check our travel routes in advance. There are many route-planning tools on the web today, and they help us to anticipate route difficulties such as heavy traffic, changes in street names, road sizes, accident locations, and many more. Some of these map applications even tell us what time we need to leave our starting location to reach our destination on time. Many of us end up “virtually” driving the route several times before we take the actual drive. Those virtual drives help us get from point A to point B in the shortest time possible, without unpleasant surprises. Antenna system developers often face a similar challenge: We may have a great antenna design to get an RF signal from point A to point B in isolation, but the scattering environment around the antenna directly impacts the antenna’s ability to get the job done. So how do we anticipate the different routes that the signal might be forced to take to reach its destination? You guessed it—modeling and simulation of the antenna’s interaction with that environment. Continue reading → Posted in Electronics | Tagged ANSYS Electronics Desktop, Antenna system, electromagnetic fields, finite-element meshing, HFSS SBR+, Visual Ray Trace | Leave a reply Instant Engineering Simulation: ANSYS Discovery Live Posted on September 7, 2017 by Mark Hindsbo 1 ANSYS has long held the vision that every engineer would be able to benefit from the insight of engineering simulation. It seems intuitive that you would want to build a digital model of your product and instantly see stresses, flows, temperature, etc. to gain insights into the design, as well as make changes in in real-time and see how they affect the performance. Speed and Ease of Use Changes Everything Simulation is ranked as one of the most critical engineering technologies in this age of the Internet of Things and additive manufacturing. However, half a century after its introduction it is still the domain of specialists and used predominantly for the most complex of engineering projects. Why? The learning curve is steep, sometimes requiring decades of experience, and it is after all rocket-science and can be both complex and time consuming to do simulations. All of this is about to change! Continue reading → Posted in Products | Tagged ANSYS Discovery Live, Complete Digital Prototypes, design process, Discovery Live, engineering simulation, engineering simulation software, simulation environment | 1 Reply Brighter, Energy-efficient LED Headlights through CFD Posted on September 6, 2017 by Sandeep Sovani 1 LEDs are increasingly used in automobile headlights because of their small size and reduced energy consumption. But, though they are much more energy efficient than traditional headlights, most of the energy required is converted to heat rather than light — 70 percent, in fact. This presents a challenge to engineers and designers because, since they are semiconductor-based, the diode junction of LEDs must be kept below 120 C. Maintaining temperature below this limit typically involves cooling airflow from an electric fan combined with heat sink fins. Continue reading → Posted in Automotive, Fluid Dynamics | Tagged ANSYS CFD, automotive, digital exploration, fluids, headlamps, headlights, LED | 1 Reply The EnSight CFD Simulation Post-Processing Story: Like a Multi-Stage Rocket Posted on September 5, 2017 by Darin McKinnis Reply EnSight, the leading post-processor for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) data is now part of ANSYS. In the two decades since its launch, EnSight has taken off like a multistage rocket. Here is the story. I grew up in that magical era when NASA used multi-stage rockets to carry Apollo astronauts to the moon and back. As a toddler I learned to count backwards from 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 … because that’s what I heard Mission Control say. I dreamt of being an astronaut, studied aerospace engineering and started my career at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. I met my lovely wife there, blocks from the NASA gates. Her parents still live next door to Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo era house. I used to store my lunch in the Mission Control fridge while working on my space shuttle aerodynamic simulations in the support room next door. So maybe it’s natural for me to think in rocket terms. Continue reading → Posted in Events/Webinars, Fluid Dynamics | Tagged CFD, EnSight, fluids, Post Processing | Leave a reply Simulation Used to Spur Design Development for Nuclear Power Posted on September 1, 2017 by Guest Blogger Leslie Dewan 2 Nuclear power is a key player in the future of clean energy, and multiple companies are pursuing new technologies to maximize nuclear’s contribution to the clean energy space. Founded in 2011 and based in Cambridge, MA, Transatomic Power is an advanced nuclear technology startup developing and commercializing a molten salt reactor (MSR), or a nuclear reactor whose fuel is in liquid, rather than solid, form. This technology, originally developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the 1960’s, offers multiple safety and cost benefits over traditional nuclear reactors, in which the fuel is in the form of solid pellets cooled by water. Tranatomic’s MSR design builds on the original work at ORNL and adds a few innovative new features that reduce the reactor’s size and, as a result, it’s cost – a huge factor in building new nuclear power plants. Though the development process is a long one, the world needs a larger capacity for clean energy generation, and it’s this ultimate goal that drives the Transatomic team forward. Continue reading → Posted in ANSYS Startup Program, Energy, Fluid Dynamics | Tagged ANSYS Fluent, ANSYS Startup Program, Clean Energy, entrepreneurs, MIT, nuclear reactor, nuclear technology, startup, Startup Program, startups, steam turbine, transatomic power, women in engineering, women in tech | 2 Replies Post navigation ← Older posts Subscribe to Blog via Email Email Address ANSYS Advantage Categories General ANSYS Startup Program Events/Webinars Guest Blogs Tips & Tricks Top 5 Engineering Articles By Week Industries Academic Aerospace & Defense Automotive Energy Healthcare High Performance Computing Internet of Things Oil & Gas Sports & Consumer Goods Turbomachinery Products Electronics Embedded Software Fluid Dynamics Multiphysics Platform Semiconductors Structural Analysis Systems Engineering Proudly powered by WordPress