- Composites. nCode DesignLife, named the 2012 CAE Innovation of the Year by Automotive Testing Technology International magazine for its approach to the fatigue of composites, continues to expand its technology for composites at 9.0. Thicker components such as those created by injection molding polymers containing short glass fibers can now be analyzed for fatigue by using finite element models of solid elements. Additionally, new analysis methods for full 3D stress states and critical plane analysis allows for prediction of sub-surface failures within the part.

- Welds. When structural failures occur in ground vehicles and other fabricated metal structures, welded joints are often the critical locations. With nCode DesignLife 9.0, users can now assess thicker welds commonly used in off-highway and construction machinery or other applications that require 3-D solid models prior to physical testing. The approach uses the stress integration method outlined in the ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code VIII (Division 2) standard and has been made easy to use by being applicable to any arbitrary finite element mesh.

- Load Reconstruction. In order to simulate product durability, it is often necessary to perform the difficult task of directly measuring the forces on a component during operation. Available at no extra cost in nCode DesignLife 9.0, users can use load reconstruction to calculate input loads based on data from both a set of physical strain gauge measurements taken across the component and the results of a unit load FEA using DesignLife’s Virtual Strain Gauge capability. All supported finite element codes such as ANSYS, Abaqus and NASTRAN can be used with this approach.

- Multi-Body Dynamics Data. Another method of calculating the dynamic in-service loads is by using a multi-body dynamic simulation with known inputs such as a road profile. These loads are then used as input to fatigue simulations. In order to streamline this process, nCode DesignLife 9.0 now directly reads the output data from two leading multi-body dynamics codes: MSC Software AdamsTM REQ files and Altair MotionSolve® PLT files.

- Visualization.A new Animation capability enables users to better understand how a structure is deforming under dynamic loading and how to improve structures to avoid fatigue failures. The linear superposition that is commonly used for calculating the fatigue damage under load can now be used to calculate the total displacement at each instant in time and this can be viewed as a full 3-D model animation. This can be shown on the base model or together with a color contour showing the locations of predicted fatigue damage.

nCode DesignLife is released as part of nCode 9.0 which provides a robust set of tools for test and CAE simulation for durability. nCode 9.0 also incorporates nCode GlyphWorks, a graphical test data processing software and nCode Automation, a scalable web-based environment for collaborative engineering test data storage, analysis and reporting. Other new features include 3-D color scatter plots using a new “XYZ Display” to visualize the relationship between 3 or more quantities, the color coding of GPS data shown on maps to indicate vehicle speed or other measurements and enhanced reporting capabilities in both desktop and web-based products.