Finite element analysis software developed by a division of Siemens has broken its own record for processing a complex structural analysis problem on commercially available hardware.
The current production version of Siemens PLM Software’s NX Nastran suite was able to solve a structural analysis problem with half a billion equations in less than 18 hours.
In comparison, a structural analysis of an entire car body model could be solved with about 100 million equations.
The analysis was conducted on behalf of an aerospace testing company and simulated the behaviour of an entire aeroplane wing structure undergoing a bending test.
The processing time shattered the company’s previous record set in February 2006 for a similar problem.
Chuck Grindstaff, chief technology officer of Siemens PLM Software, said: ‘Simulating the destructive wing-bending test is an especially important component of virtual product development in airplane manufacturing, and the 18-hour turnaround time provides a solution virtually overnight.
'As a result, our customers’ workflow process can proceed uninterrupted.’
The analysis required 17.8 hours of elapsed time on an IBM Power 570 server using eight Power 6 cores at 4.7GHz, 64 Gbytes of memory and 24 striped disks of 148 Gbytes capacity each.
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