Meshless simulation vs traditional FEA: where SimSolid fits

The bottleneck is usually preparation

In a traditional finite element workflow the solver is rarely the slowest step. Engineers spend most of their time preparing the model: cleaning up CAD geometry, removing small holes and fillets, splitting parts into meshable pieces, building and checking the mesh, then repeating much of that work every time the design changes.

For a single part this is manageable. For an assembly of hundreds of parts, with bolts, welds and contacts, it can take days before the first result, and by then the design has often moved on.

How SimSolid avoids the mesh

SimSolid works on the CAD geometry itself. Its engine extends the finite element method with what the developer calls external approximations: the degrees of freedom are tied to volumes and surfaces of the parts rather than to the nodes of a mesh. Several solution passes with error estimation refine the result automatically.

• Small holes, fillets and bosses can stay in the model.
• CAD with small gaps or overlaps between parts can still be analyzed.
• Assemblies with hundreds to thousands of parts run on a standard laptop or desktop PC.
• Typical results arrive in seconds to minutes.

What this changes in practice

Because a run is fast and needs no meshing skills, analysis can move earlier in design and to more people. At Modulift, a UK maker of lifting equipment, design time on a development project dropped from 600 to 200 hours, and analysis moved from one or two specialists to a team of seven. See the Modulift case study.

Where traditional FEA still fits

A meshless tool does not replace every analysis. Mesh-based tools in HyperWorks remain the right choice for:

• Crash, impact and drop events with large deformation over a very short time (Radioss).
• Detailed studies where the team needs full control of the mesh at a known hot spot.
• Processes such as sheet metal forming, casting or injection molding.
• Workflows where a customer or standard specifies a particular solver and model format.

Using both

A practical split is to use SimSolid while the design is still changing, to compare many variants of a frame or assembly quickly, and then validate the chosen design in detail with HyperMesh and OptiStruct. Both are part of the same Siemens Simcenter portfolio.

• Early concept: SimSolid on the full assembly, many variants.
• Design freeze: detailed FEA of critical parts and load cases.
• Changes after freeze: SimSolid again to check the effect quickly.

Sources

• Simcenter SimSolid product introduction (Altair Help)
• Simcenter SimSolid (Siemens)
• Modulift case study (Symetri)

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