Developed by CAE Group, Inc'

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ModelChecker for ANSYS

• Developed by CAE Group, Inc.
• Dr. Lawrence Durocher, President
• Woodbury, CT
• 203 263-8422

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Most Companies Have the Same Primary Business
Objective

• Create and deliver better, more reliable,
  products in a shorter period of time and at a
  reduced cost
• Many companies have adopted a 6 Sigma strategy
  to improve growth, productivity, and product
  quality. This requires improvements in all
  processes including those of product development
  and engineering.

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FEA Software A Tool in Your Process

• Characteristics of all FEA tools
• Compute intensive
• Manpower and lead-time intensive
• Require training/education
• Error-prone, consider a model with 100,000 nodes,
  make a mistake at one node and critical results
  might be off by orders of magnitude, or even
  worse, might have a small but significant error!
• As we improve processes to achieve 6 Sigma
  quality and reduce lead-times and cost, how will
  we achieve significant improvements in these
  characteristics?

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Current Trends in FEA

• Strong demand for fast turn-around in model
  development and analysis resultslarge, complex
  models are becoming the norm.
• Analysis groups are over-loaded with work or no
  longer exist. FEA user is a generalist, rather
  than an FEA specialist.
• Global outsourcing is becoming common-place and
  contractor may not be local(on-site).
• World-wide collaboration, within a company, or
  between companies has become more prevalent.

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Implications of Such Trends

• Model development/debugging/documentation
  time/costs must be compressed.
• FEA experts may not always be available to
  thoroughly review all models and do not have
  enough time to devote to such activities.
• Collaboration tools are needed to allow FEA model
  information exchange without the burden of huge
  files.
• FEA software must move from the domain of simple
  element shape checking to a more advisory (expert
  system) role.
• Automatic model verification has been basically
  ignored by all FEA vendors this must change!

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ModelCheckerWhat Does This Software Do?

• Provides a menu-driven (or batch),automatic,
  comprehensive check of any ANSYS structural model
  before the model is analyzed should be used
  throughout the entire model-building process.
• Other physics environments, such as thermal, can
  be checked by switching via one command(ETCHG) to
  equivalent structural.
• Comprehensive documentation of the results of the
  checks, as well as the model itself, in an HTML
  report.

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ModelCheckerProduct Capabilities/Interface

• Requires minimal support and training
• Simple menu choices or simply have software check
  everything.
• Report is HTML-based, very descriptive, and has
  extensive plotting options. File size is small,
  allows easy use of e-mail or posting to a
  website.
• Users Manual is HTML-based, discusses each check
  and the implications of each check.

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How Does User Invoke ModelChecker?

• CAEG supplied granule and menulist files change
  the main menu and invoke encrypted macros. The
  ANSYS production source code has also been
  modified but is distributed as part of standard
  ANSYS.

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ModelChecker - 1st Submenu
Note Users can check the solid model, the FEA
model or both. MC is used throughout the model
building process!
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Results From ModelChecker

• Produces a detailed HTML report, including plots,
  documenting the model as well as the results of
  the various checks.
• If any problem is found in a given check, the
  questionable entities are counted and grouped
  into ANSYS components for later
  review/modifications.
• Lets take a look at a sample report

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Turbine Model
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Hyperlink to Turbine Model Report
Complete check and report on this model (about
310,000 nodes and 250,000 3-D elements),
including part-by-part net load and mass summary,
is approximately 1.5 minutes on a typical PC.
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Model With Lots of Errors
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Link to HTML report for Error Model
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Engineers in General

• Do not thoroughly check a model unless the
  results dont look right
• Spend significant time debugging complex FEA
  models.
• May not find all of the errors in a given model,
  a model that is eventually used for
  design/manufacturing decisions.
• Rarely document their models to the extent
  desired by management.
• Do not have the required modeling
  experience/skills as new hires.

ModelChecker attempts to address each of these
traits by providing fast, automatic, unbiased,
thorough checking and documentation for ANSYS
models and HELP links (in the HTML report) to the
appropriate training materials.
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Primary Benefits of ModelChecker

• Increase productivity
• Eliminate analysis runs that produce bad answers,
  waste computer resources and tie up FEA
  software licenses
• Decrease model debugging time/costs use
  ModelChecker throughout the model building
  process.
• Decrease model documentation time/costs

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Primary Benefits of ModelChecker

• Increase FEA reliability
• All models must pass through the same checks -
  user independent! Quality/reliability enhanced
  by requiring all models to be subjected to
  consistent, unbiased tests. This approach is very
  consistent with ISO 9000 objectives.

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Primary Benefits of ModelChecker

• Quickly and thoroughly document the model
• HTML report contains information that would take
  many hours to obtain, or could not be obtained,
  by ANSYS menus/commands.
• No more I didnt have time to document the
  model excuses, every model is easily documented.
• Provide a means (HTML report) of supplying
  detailed, ANSYS model characteristics to external
  support organizations without conveying
  proprietary geometry and detailed boundary
  condition information.
• Automated, preliminary checking of outsourced
  models or models built automatically by vertical
  applications or by discipline-specific software.

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Primary Benefits of ModelChecker

• Educate inexperienced users via the warnings and
  the corresponding HTML links and users manual.
• Reduce burden that inexperienced users place on
  experienced users. Software provides a training
  aid and HTML report provides concise model review
  information.
• Collaboration tool for world-wide use, ANSYS FEA
  model review simply need browser.
• Serves as a vehicle for company, or
  group-specific, checks and reports. Data is
  stored in ANSYS database, user macros are
  supported, and HTML template can be customized.

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Justifying the Purchase of ModelChecker

• Quality/reliability/productivity, education and
  documentation arguments are quite strong.
• Standardized checks tie in nicely with ISO 9000
  and other certification/quality procedures.
• Only tool that lets a supervisor/manager quickly
  review ANSYS finite element models with an
  independent expert system supporting and
  validating in-house analysis work.

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Justifying the Purchase of ModelChecker

• ROI Calculation
• Most significant time and cost savings will come
  from reduced model debugging time
• Easiest ROI calculation is based on very
  conservative reduced documentation time/costs
• Assume 15 of man-time is documentation
• Assume the HTML report and plots only reduce the
  total documentation time by 10
• This very conservative estimate gives an ANSYS
  man-time reduction of 1.5. This savings alone
  will usually cost-justify the lease/purchase.

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Justifying the Purchase of ModelChecker

• ModelChecker could also be called seatbelts for
  FEA.
• Most of the time you dont need a seatbelt, but
  when the unexpected occurs you would have paid
  any cost for the seatbelt.
• To complete the seatbelt analog, most fatal car
  accidents occur within 25 miles of home. The FEA
  model that you didnt document and check
  thoroughly will be the model that you will wish
  you had!
• What is the potential cost to your company of an
  incorrect model?