SimScale Update 04/2016: Elastic Support and Improved Community Support

Commited to ensuring the best experience with SimScale for our users, we are constantly improving the platform and adding new simulation features. Here are the latest updates:

Elastic Support

With the latest SimScale updates we enabled Elastic Support, a constraint boundary condition that allows you to add an elastic foundation to a part of your model without the need to add a domain representation like a spring or an elastic material layer to your setup. It is defined by a stiffness parameter and reacts to tension and compression.

Pneumatic Actuator

The application above shows the stress analysis of a pneumatic actuator consisting of a piston, a spring and an elastomer diaphragm.

The results are shown both for an analysis involving the complete assembly as well as a second setup where the spring has been replaced by an elastic support boundary condition with the corresponding stiffness.

Using the elastic support, the mesh size and computation time have been considerably reduced as the spring does not need to be meshed and the cyclic symmetry of the remaining assembly allows one to investigate a subset of the model. You can find the public project here.

Stress analysis of the actuator

The elastic support can also be used to suppress undesired rigid body motions especially in nonlinear static analyses where inertia effects are disregarded and under-constrained systems are likely to diverge. This can be easily accomplished by adding virtual soft springs to the setup via elastic support.

For soft stiffness parameters, the influence on the results can be often neglected. The picture below shows a metal stamping process. Here is the public project.

Metal Stamping Process

Easy access to our help and support offerings

We continuously work on improving the support for our community. Since the last releases, you are now able to:

• Easily share your project with our support team via one click;
• Access our learning videos showcasing the basics of using SimScale step-by-step;
• Share screenshots of the issues you are facing easily with the new feedback mechanism.

New support options

Screenshot feedback tool

Additionally you can ask for advice from the experienced simulation engineers in the SimScale community and use the hundreds of simulation projects that are added every day.