Watch CBS News

HyperWorks Partner Alliance Adds NVH Software From Michigan Engineering Services

TROY -- Altair's HyperWorks Partner Alliance Wednesday announced a new partner, Michigan Engineering Services LLC, which has made its Energy Finite Element Analysis Solver software for noise, vibration and harshness analysis available within the program.
EFEA can be used for mid- to high-frequency vibration and acoustic simulations for complex structural-acoustic systems.

Said Altair's senior program manager for NVH, Jianmin Guan, said EFEA "complements HyperWorks' industry-leading NVH simulation and optimization solutions very well and offers our customers outstanding capabilities in dealing with airborne and structure-borne noise problems in the mid and high frequency ranges."

EFEA has many applications and has been applied and validated in naval, automotive and aircraft industries. It is compatible with CAD databases used in the product development process and can be easily integrated within a multi-disciplinary design environment. Being computationally efficient and easy to use, this technology offers a competitive advantage for customers and streamlines structural-acoustic simulations with other analyses during the design process.

"The collaboration between Altair and MES is based on the strong technical foundation of the two companies," said MES CTO Nick Vlahopoulos. "The EFEA solver complements the collective capabilities of the HyperWorks partners by adding the opportunity for customers to conduct mid- to-high-frequency vibro-acoustic analysis using finite elements, a capability that was unavailable within the program until now."

The EFEA method is different from the finite element analysis method, because it uses energy- based primary variables instead of pursuing a displacement-based solution. This allows for significant computational efficiency that uses only a small fraction of elements compared to FEA.

One notable benefit of the EFEA method is that the model requires no modal density information. Further, the model retains a direct connection with the physical design through its finite-element-based model, while structural damping and acoustic treatment can be specified on the physical part of the model where it is actually applied. The results offered by EFEA can be visualized by any post-processor, thus the method fits perfectly in any design process for developing efficient noise-mitigation strategies. The EFEA method can also be compared to that of statistical energy analysis, because they both use vibrational and acoustic energy variables.

Released 12 years ago, Altair's original and versatile unit-based licensing system has allowed HyperWorks users to access a growing portfolio of applications while optimizing their investment. Every license is composed of a pool of recyclable HyperWorks units (HWUs), which can be used to access any application within the HyperWorks family. 

After seeing the success of the unit-based system, Altair decided to expand the model to third-party companies and allowed them to run their own applications under this unit-based system, a collaboration known as the HyperWorks Partner Alliance. The overall flexibility of these HWUs empowers users and allows them access to the largest and most complete suite of CAE applications available. This licensing model makes the benefits to participating HyperWorks customers infinite, with their return on investment increasing each time a new application is added to the offering. They can access any of the partner programs using the same leased HWUs they are already using to run HyperWorks, all available at no incremental cost or long-term commitment.

To learn more about MES or EFEA, please attend one of the introductory webinars, being held on Thursday, Feb. 7 at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Eastern time. Both Webinars will be hosted by Altair and presented by MES.

Michigan Engineering Services was founded in 2002 as a research and development company, specializing in developing commercial software and advanced technology for engineering simulations. MES' activities span both the defense and the commercial industrial sectors. MES is located in Ann Arbor.

More at www.altair.com, www.simulatetoinnovate.com or www.hyperworksalliance.com.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.