Altair Manufacturing Solver 2022.3 Release Notes

Altair Manufacturing Solver is a state-of-the-art solver suite for manufacturing applications built on a parallel, modular, and extensible framework that is suitable for simulations of manufacturing processes. This release contains solutions for the following modules.

• Additive Manufacturing
• Injection Molding
• Metal Casting
• Polymer Material Data Analytics (PMDA)
• Molding Toolkit

Highlights of this release include:

• Compensation of the part geometry to account for deformation in the Additive Manufacturing module.
• Confidence of fill plot for given process conditions in the Injection Molding module.
• Metal Casting -

Inherent strain solution with body-fitted mesh

A new feature to compute solutions with body-fitted meshes is implemented. The use of body-fitted mesh reduces the error in the geometry representation of the part and improves the accuracy with fewer elements (especially for lattice-like structures). This leads to better performance than the conventional voxel mesh-based solutions for the same desired accuracy. The body-fitted solver does not need a layered tetrahedral mesh, which makes mesh generation easier and reduces the number of elements. (AMSLVR-640)

Compensation of part geometry to account for deformation

In metal 3D printing, the final shape of the printed part is often deformed from the original design, resulting in out-of-tolerance defects. To avoid these defects, it is desirable to compensate for the deformation in the original part geometry. A new process is implemented to apply the final displacement result predicted at the end of the springback stage in the reverse direction to the original geometry. The compensated geometry is exported as a file in STL format. In a subsequent release, an automated iterative process will be implemented. (AMSLVR-423)

Mapping nodal displacement results from voxel mesh to part surface mesh

In the voxel mesh-based inherent strain solver, the nodal results on the boundary of the voxel mesh do not adhere to the exact boundary surface of the printed part geometry. However, it is preferred to visualize the results on the part boundary surface and it helps to understand the effect of the solution on the part design. A mapping process is implemented to interpolate the voxel mesh-based nodal displacements to the nodes of the triangles on the boundary mesh of the part geometry. (AMSLVR-424)

Non-congruent (mismatched) mesh contact between mold components.

The thermal solver can handle non-conformal meshes between different mold components using Multi Points Constraints (MPC). In previous releases, the solver required the meshes to be congruent (matched surface mesh, which has a similar structure if needed that can be connected) on the contact surfaces. This new feature allows for a much more robust meshing strategy. (AMSLVR-641)

Non-congruent (mismatched) mesh contact between mold and cast part

The new part-mold coupling improves the accuracy of heat transfer and energy balance at the non-congruent contact surfaces between the mold and the cast part, even when the mesh is very different on each side at the contact boundary condition. This new feature increases the ease of meshing and enables the support of voxel mesh on the mold side. (AMSLVR-642)

Thermal solver supports voxel mesh and different element types

The thermal solver for the mold can now handle hexahedral, triangular prism, and rectangular pyramid elements in addition to the tetrahedral elements. This enables more possibilities for creating a high-quality mesh. Inspire can now create a good-quality voxel mesh for the mold parts. (AMSLVR-627)

More efficient part-mold mapper for non-conformal mesh

This new mapper offers a significant improvement in calculation times and is much more robust and accurate. (AMSLVR-643)

Thermal linear solver supports non-contiguous node numbering

In the previous release, the mold side linear equation solver required the node numbers to start from 1 and use contiguous numbering. The solver is now enhanced to support node numbers starting with any ID and they can be non-contiguous. (AMSLVR-611)

Post-processing of deformation results mixed up in piston shot and tilt pouring with crucible thermomechanical analysis

Due to the use of the same result names for mesh movement and warpage mesh deformation, there were issues in the post-processing of the part deformation during thermomechanical analysis. The analysis now uses different result names for mesh movement and warpage mesh deformation. (AMSLVR-384).

Warpage analysis during solidification for models with filters

Warpage analysis during solidification no longer fails when filters are present in the model. (AMSLVR-587)

Constant level filling and crash due to zero flow rate

In a constant level filling analysis, the flow rate is maintained such that the level of the liquid is constant in the sprue. In some cases, if the required inlet flow rate drops to zero, this was leading to a solver crash. This issue is resolved by maintaining a minimum flow rate. This rate is carefully chosen to be the minimum possible for the given mesh. (AMSLVR-603)

Cycling analysis final time step

The solver uses automatic timestep determination for the analysis. When cycling analyses run with a specified stop time, the final timestep is determined such that the end time matches the user-specified stop time. The real number comparison in this no longer results in an extra timestep. (AMSLVR-598)

The injection molding solver has three complementing solutions addressing the spectrum of needs of injection molding CAE:

• Detailed 3D (3D) - Requires four or more layers of mesh through the thickness.
• Fast 3D - Also known as Hybrid 3D, it is a powerful solution that requires only one layer of mesh through the thickness.
• Shell - Requires only a surface mesh to compute the solution.

All solvers use the Inspire Mold interface. Please see the Inspire Mold release notes for what is available in the interface.

Cooling analysis with mold (Fast 3D)

A new feature to support cooling analyses with mold mesh included in the model is added. Including the mold helps to accurately predict the temperature by specifying the HTC in coolant channels. This also accounts for the thickness of the mold material between the cooling channels and part surface.

Multishot molding (3D)

Multishot molding is also known as 2K-molding and bi-injection. More than one polymer is injected into the mold, each polymer has its own injection point (inlet), and they fill their respective cavities. These polymers are assumed immiscible and they can be injected simultaneously or sequentially. This feature is available now in the solver and it will have an Inspire interface in one of the subsequent versions. (AMSLVR-630)

Non-congruent (mismatched) mesh contact between mold and polymer (3D)

The contact between the polymer part and the mold is modeled using a contact boundary condition and the meshes of these two parts are disconnected. In the previous releases, the solver required the meshes to be congruent (matched surface mesh, that is, they have a similar structure if needed that can be connected). In this release, this requirement is removed, and at the contact, these two meshes can have a mismatched disconnected mesh. This greatly improves the ease of meshing. (AMSLVR-529)

Sink Mark Prediction (Fast 3D, 3D)

The computation of sink mark depends on the accurate computation of the thickness of the part at each surface node (or integration point). A new and accurate method to compute thickness is implemented in this release.

Compute part weight based on Tait parameters (Fast3D, 3D)

In previous releases, part weight was computed using the constant density given in the material data. In this release, part weight is computed using the density based on the Tait parameters, if they are available in the material data. Otherwise, constant density is used in the part weight computation. (AMSLVR-609)

Robustness and convergence of packing analysis (Fast 3D)

In the previous release, the fast packing solution used a direct solver (PARDISO) as there were issues with the robustness and convergence when using an iterative solver. Improvements have been made to the formulation to overcome this weakness and improve the convergence of this packing stage of the solution with an iterative solver.

Density result in cooling simulation results (Fast 3D)

The density result is added to the cooling simulation results. (AMSLVR-635)

Error message and solver stoppage when V/P switchover input data is incorrect (3D)

The solver was failing quietly when the V/P switchover data was incorrect. The solver now issues a clear error message and stops the solver. (AMSLVR-607)

Discrepancies between CSV and OUT files (3D)

There were differences in the solver output data for initial time steps between the CSV file and the OUT files. Now, both files show the same number of time steps and the relevant results. (AMSLVR-189)

Gate size determination

The gate location optimization module is enhanced to determine the gate size considering the material behavior, estimated gate shear rate, and other process parameters. The diameter for circular gate types and the width and depth for rectangular gate types are provided. (AMSLVR-595)

Confidence of fill

The result demonstrates the filling capacity of the polymer material within the cavity under the specified injection parameters, as assessed through pressure loss, clamp force, and melt front temperature reduction. The results are categorized into four distinct stages: surely be filled, may be difficult to fill, will be difficult to fill, and short shot. (AMSLVR-594)

Improvements to gate location optimization

The gate location optimization module now considers the multiple non-gatable directions in addition to non-gatable surfaces. This enables ease of model setup in Inspire. (AMSLVR-596)

Show gate contribution percentage volume of filling analysis

This feature indicates the gate contribution volume in the filling area in the fast filling, molding window, and confidence of fill. (AMSLVR-572)

Show flow length ratio of Filling Analysis

This feature indicates the flow length to thickness ratio (L/t) in the fast filling, molding window, and confidence of fill. (AMSLVR-584)

Closing log files

The material data testing modules no longer leave log files open after creating them in Inspire Mold. (AMSLVR-638)

Polymer material library: incorrect bulk modulus computation for arrays of temperatures

There are two functions in the library for computing bulk modulus. One only works on singular values, the other was using a broadcast method in the computation of the derivative wrt pressure. The broadcast method was giving incorrect answers. The function now uses a loop and answers are verified. (AMSLVR-645)

Polymer material library: help frame image not showing

The help frame on the third tab in the user interface now shows the theory image. Originally, it did not get included in the build. (AMSLVR-646)

Viscosity fitter: launch from distributable file not working

The viscosity fitter now launches from the distributable file. (AMSLVR-647)