New Features

While significant Engineering, Math, and Computer Science has been invested to produce all the enhancements in Altair® MotionSolve® and Altair® MotionView® 2019.0, they can be grouped into the following 5 categories – all designed to make the computer work harder to help design better products faster, at lower cost, and with less risk.

System Optimization Solutions

Our goal was to provide users with the ability to automatically improve (i.e. optimize) the performance of the multi-body systems they are simulating – saving significant time and effort over a traditional, manually iterative approach. The new Optimization Wizard makes it convenient and intuitive to set up and perform an optimization by prompting for design variables, responses, objectives and constraints, then solving, reviewing along with comparing the results.

A gradient-based optimizer (SLSQP) is used, and the sensitivities are computed analytically making solutions significantly faster than other methods for certain classes of problems.

Durability & Ride Comfort Solutions

Here, our goal was to help engineers developing ground vehicles to determine fatigue life of components and improve driver comfort. Vehicle-specific simulation events have been added or streamlined to closely mimic standard physical tests performed in a lab (such as with N-post shakers) or on a test track. Road loads can be used as inputs for a fatigue analysis and/or ride comfort analysis. Also available in this release, a new free durability tire model suitable for rough roads, based on the Elliptical Cams contact method described in the well-known book by Hans Pacejka titled Tire and Vehicle Dynamics (3rd edition).

General Machinery Solutions

In this category, our goal was to help users more easily build and simulate complex systems. To this end, we have added a library of higher-level modeling elements including cables, pulleys, and winches; linear actuators, struts, and rods; as well as gears and cams – obviating the need for users to separately define parts, markers, and joints for these elements.

Joints are further generalized to make them more realistic by adding friction, compliance, limits and clearance or “slop”. It is now easier to define and apply aerodynamic loads, both for steady- and non-steady-state operating conditions. Lastly, it is now simpler to export comprehensive component loads for subsequent import and use with FEA (e.g., via HyperMesh), either for Dynamic analysis using the load time-histories or for Static analysis with inertia relief.

System Design Solutions

Much of the MotionSolve and MotionView multi-body modeling and simulation technology has been incorporated into Inspire Motion to enable system design closely tied to 3D CAD geometry. This category of enhancements pertains to our ongoing goal of helping casual users build multi-body models and understand how their mechanical systems behave – by making it easier to build, analyze, and improve assemblies starting from 3D CAD in Altair Inspire™, with the option to optimize the topology of one or more components within those assemblies.

Specific enhancements for this release include automatic geometry-based contacts, joint friction, and couplers.

General Modeling Improvements

Many other enhancements in this release are designed to enable users to assemble and solve models to evaluate product behavior much faster, especially for vehicle simulations. This is accomplished by enabling users to reuse and visualize existing data much more effectively, such as through the exporting and importing of Excel data; support for new leaf spring types, preloads, and standard testing procedures with our Leaf Spring Builder; the ability to do tire morphing (by generating new tire property files); and use of a new Model Topology Viewer.