LMS Structures Offers Full Meshing

By DE Editors

LMS (Leuven, Belgium) has introduced Rev 6 of LMS Virtual.Lab Structures, its integrated solution for structural modeling and analysis.

Starting from a wireframe, surface, or a solid geometry, LMS Virtual.Lab Structures Rev 6 is able to generate different structural mesh types using a full range of meshing methods. LMS Virtual.Lab Structures is solver-neutral and offers a set of integrated drivers to industry-standard structural analysis solvers for linear and non-linear analysis such as MSC.Nastran, NX Nastran, ABAQUS, Elfini, and Ansys.

To accelerate the creation of FE models, LMS Virtual.Lab Structures provides tools for the creation of CATIA V5 CAD models and for the manipulation of solid, surface, or wireframe geometries. LMS Virtual.Lab Structures includes interfaces to other CAD systems such as to CATIA V4, STEP, IGES, UGS, Pro/E, etc.

In addition to geometry healing capabilities, Virtual.Lab provides meshing capabilities for 1D, 2D, and 3D meshing. These include automatic geometry simplification tools for surface and beam meshing, and solid meshing based on tetra filling and hex meshing. LMS Virtual.Lab Structures also offers automatic solid tetra- or hexa-dominant meshing with automatic compatible meshing at interfaces.

Rev 6 of LMS Virtual.Lab Structures offers new methods for topological interpretation which reduce the number of mesh elements that must be manually edited. In addition, the meshed parts always remain associated to their original geometries and automatically reflect all modifications implemented on the initial CAD model.

"The powerful meshing solution in LMS Virtual.lab Structures is unique in its kind, as it combines basic meshing, advanced surface and beam meshing, advanced solid meshing, automatic solid tetra/hexa dominant meshing, and geometry healing into one single package," commented Willy Bakkers, vice-president and general manager of the LMS CAE Division.

The new modeling and assembly solution offers the capability to flexibly build full-system simulation models starting from multiple component and sub-system models.

There is a new Wave Based Substructuring (WBS) tool, which assembles the structural model as a compilation of reduced FE models of individual parts and expresses the deformation of the coupling interface in the form of basic functions called waves.

There are also mesh morphing tools that enable designers to tune a full-vehicle FE model according to product performance and styling requirements. Rev 6 adds a vehicle concept modeling module, which allows designers and engineers to create an incremental beam/joint model directly onto a morphed FE model.

The embedded solver support in LMS Virtual.Lab has been expanded to cover linear as well as non-linear modeling and analysis cases through the addition of ABAQUS pre- and postprocessing and associative driving from within the LMS Virtual.Lab software suite.

For more information on LMS Virtual.Lab, click here.

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