Altair SimSolid Overview

Altair SimSolid is structural analysis software developed specifically for upfront assessment. It eliminates geometry simplification and meshing, the two most time-consuming and expertise-extensive tasks done in traditional FEA, enabling the analysis of fully-featured CAD assemblies in minutes without meshing.

SimSolid can analyze complex parts and large assemblies not practical with traditional FEA and do it efficiently on a desktop class computer. Both fast and accurate, SimSolid controls solution accuracy using a unique multi-pass adaptive analysis.

The computational engine is based on breakthrough extensions to the theory of external approximations. External approximations are a generalization of Finite Element Method (FEM) in terms that:

• Absolutely arbitrary geometrical shapes can be used as “finite elements”
• Basis functions which approximate field of interest in the part volume can be of arbitrary class and are independent of the volume shape

SimSolid does not use the point-wise degrees of freedom (DOF) inherent in traditional FEA. SimSolid’s DOF are functionals with geometrical support in the form of volumes, areas, line clouds, and point clouds. This provides the ability to handle geometrical imperfections, as well as assembly contact imperfections like gaps, penetrations and ragged contact areas.

Benefits

Eliminate Geometry Simplification and Meshing

SimSolid’s unique technology completely eliminates geometry simplification and meshing, the two most time consuming, expertise extensive and error prone tasks done in traditional FEA. With SimSolid, model preparation is done in minutes.
 

Analyze Complex Parts and Large Assemblies
SimSolid has been designed to analyze complex parts and large assemblies not practical with traditional FEA. SimSolid is tolerant of imprecise geometry. Its assembly connections are industry best at handling ragged contact surfaces with both gaps and overlapping geometry.
 

Get Results in Seconds to Minutes

SimSolid is fast, real fast. Solution times are typically measured in second to minutes on a standard PC. With SimSolid, multiple design scenarios can be quickly analyzed and compared. And, accuracy can be specified on an individual part level allowing a rapid drill down to any level of detail that is required.