The Aerospace and composites industry sectors are important engines for Utah’s economic development strategy, and are helping to propel the state’s job growth.
AnalySwift, a USTAR supported Utah State University spin-out, has developed high-fidelity modeling software for composite material designs. This software can be utilized by aerospace, energy composites and other advanced materials manufacturing and supports the growth of these industry clusters. AnalySwift recently forged a new partnership with Altran, a high-tech engineering consulting firm, that will help commercialize Altran’s upcoming optimization code for the design of composite wind turbine blades.
AnalySwift’s VABS (Variational Asymptotic Beam Sectional Analysis) and PreVABS software will play a key role in combination with other optimization and math tools, developed in-house by Altran as part of its new optimization code. The code, which is still under development, is based on aerodynamic and structural calculations and will include an optimization loop to modify structural pre-designs. The code will address aerodynamics, structural modeling and optimization of emerging wind turbine blades.
“AnalySwift is excited about the continued relationship with Altran,” said Alan Wood, president and CEO of AnalySwift. “Researchers and engineers worldwide are actively using VABS for the efficient and accurate modeling of composite slender structures. In addition to its powerful analysis capabilities, VABS is also recognized for helping organizations get products to market more quickly, at a lower cost and with a higher confidence in quality.”
The technology underlying VABS makes it the first truly efficient high-fidelity modeling tool for composite slender structures, saving users computing time relative to more complex and time consuming 3D finite element analyses (FEA), without losing accuracy. Instead of choosing between accuracy and efficiency, engineers can now confidently design and analyze complex microstructures. Structures as complex as real composite rotor blades, with hundreds of layers, can be handled by a laptop computer. Analysis time can typically be reduced from several hours to seconds.
VABS enables rigorous modeling of complex composite slender structures, such as wind turbine blades, helicopter rotor blades, propellers, wing sections and bridges. PreVABS is a design driven preprocessor to VABS.
“Due to its versatility, VABS can model beams of any shape and a wide variety of materials,” according to Wenbin YU, CTO of AnalySwift. “In fact, VABS can deal not only with arbitrary layups, but also with isotropic, orthotropic and general anisotropic materials. As such, VABS delivers the best available combination of accuracy, efficiency and versatility.”
AnalySwift’s software solutions are based on a powerful mathematical approach, providing customers a competitive advantage through dramatic reductions in engineering time, without sacrificing accuracy in multiphysics modeling. Utilizing technology licensed from Utah State University, as well as software developed at Georgia Institute of Technology, AnalySwift offers the best compromise between efficiency, accuracy and versatility for multiphysics analysis of composite materials and structures. The technology has been supported by the US Army, US National Science Foundation, the US Air Force, Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative (USTAR) and industry. For more information about AnalySwift visit www.analyswift.com.
