Breaking Down the Interoperability Barrier Among Different FEA Software

Multidisciplinary engineering simulation workflows involve several analysis types and FEA solvers. Most of these analyses share a common geometric model, while in many cases, the results of an analysis are required as an input for a subsequent one. Such a landscape may require the repetition of some modeling work for different analysis types. This brings up significant interoperability issues among different solvers. A way to address the above, is to employ advanced pre-processing capabilities to build and maintain a single analysis model for several FEA solvers at the same time, and to export solver-specific input files for each analysis. A further suggested step, which eliminates the necessity of exporting and maintaining solver-specific files, is the employment of a standard neutral file-format. Files in this standard neutral file-format, exported by the pre-processor and then properly supported and interpreted by the different FEA solvers, can reduce the repeating modeling burden and the interoperability issues. Such a file-format, if capable to migrate the results of one analysis as an input to the next one, also reduces the effort of the additional analysis model preparation effort. Notably, model consistency can be assured. Model updates, applied upon a single unified file, can be directly propagated to the different solvers, reducing error prone multiple analysis model updates. Furthermore, the use of a single unified model, in a neutral format, facilitates the co-operation between engineering teams. As expected, the overall digital product development procedure is accelerated, and its quality is improved. VMAP is such a standard format for CAE data storage, based on HDF5 (High-performance data management and storage suite), with the aim to incorporate, in a solver-neutral manner, user data, meta-data, geometry and discretization, coordinate and unit systems, results and state variables, parameters of material models etc. This presentation, demonstrates the setup of an interoperable solver-neutral file in VMAP standard format, and the employment of it through complex simulation workflows. Moreover, the presentation examines how a multidisciplinary pre-processor, with multiple FEA solver interoperability capabilities, can accommodate the requirements of this approach.