Mentor Graphics Announces Flowmaster Thermal Analysis Tool

Mentor Graphics has announced several new capabilities for its Flowmaster simulation software solution for thermo-fluid systems. The latest release contains several significant features for pre-processing, simulation, data management, and design collaboration, the company says.

The new "experiments" capability allows users to create response surfaces and export meta-model data as either standard ANSI C code or as S-Functions for use in a real-time environment, providing support for hardware-in-the-loop simulations. Using a Latin Square algorithm helps users generate unique combinations of distributed input values between specific bounds.

"Our 'experiments' features in the new Flowmaster release continue to provide our customers with the ability to conduct superior 'what-if' analysis for fluid flow simulations," said Erich Buergel, general manager of the Mentor Graphics Mechanical Analysis Division. "The ability to export Flowmaster models as C code or S-Functions allows us to support systems engineers performing system level testing of embedded systems in real-time environments."

Additionally, Monte Carlo simulations can be performed to produce simulation results based on a probability distribution generated from a mean and standard deviation for selected input parameters. This allows the effect of small variations in input values to be examined, and allows the Flowmaster product to be used in risk analysis and quality control environments such as Design for Six Sigma (DFSS).

With this latest release, systems engineers can now implement an integrated native 1D-3D solution using the Flowmaster and FloEFD products.

Additional capabilities include an improved thermal bridge for heat transfer analysis, which automatically recognizes the transition between different flow regimes; dynamic journal bearing based on the popular Booker and Martin modeling for fluid flow analyses; advanced heat exchangers used to predict pressure drop and heat duty for single phase, cross-flow, compact heat exchangers; and traceable data management for project sharing and effective project management.

For more information, visit Mentor Graphics.

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