Latest Developments in Crash Pre Processing and Post Processing - Innovative Ideas Brought to the Industry

The increasingly demanding and complex requirements in Crash Analysis, call for continuous and innovative software development. BETA CAE Systems in an effort to meet and exceed the requirements of the industry is introducing new cutting edge technologies, both in the pre-processing area with ANSA, and in post-processing with μETA. This paper presents these new technologies. With the introduction of a new version of ANSA in 2009 a new user interface was presented. The new interface is a long-term effort to give the CAE engineer the capacity to work in a modern software interface environment leading in increased productivity and “ease-of-use”. Taking the burden of the hard pre-processing tasks away, it allows the user to take full advantage of the solvers capabilities. The effort is ongoing and further enhancements and developments throughout 2010 and the 13.x versions will lead to a totally new user workflow. At the same time, the development of highly specialized tools can greatly reduce the re- processing time by automating various difficult operations. A characteristic example is the introduction of an integrated multi-body solver that allows the manipulation of complex kinematic mechanisms of crash models (i.e. suspensions, seats, dummies, roof tops etc.). In the field of occupant and pedestrian safety, advanced tools that automate the procedures of target identification and impactor positioning allow the easy creation of corresponding load cases. Additionally, these tools give the possibility of further analysis types such as Robustness Analysis. In the area of post-processing, the advances are equally impressive in the latest μΕΤΑ versions. Better utilization of system resources, such as smaller memory footprint and a huge speedup in graphics performance, guarantee that the responsiveness and feel of the software environment won’t be compromised even by the largest models. Additionally, advanced functionality, like the direct calculation of section forces, provides the tools that are needed for the evaluation of the results. Recently, process automation tools are introduced, which together with advanced report generation features make the automation of post-processing much easier.