EKK, Inc. Newsletter - November/December 2004
Traditionally, the density of the finite element mesh generated by the CAPCAST meshing software (KENT) has been uniform across the casting and the mold, as seen in the figure below.
As you can see, the lengths of the element edges in the green area (the mold) are generally the same as the edges in the blue area (the casting). Recent improvements to KENT now automatically generate much larger edge lengths in the mold, as seen in the figure below.
This allows for substantially smaller models to be generated, which in turn allows for much quicker analysis runs. Notice that near the casting surface, the mold elements are similarly sized to the elements in the casting. This ensures accurate simulation results. In the table below, the mesh sizes are compared, as well as the time required to run a natural solidification analysis on each model, with the relative improvement in the new mesh compared to the old mesh displayed in the last column:
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Old Mesh
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New Mesh
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Improvement
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|
Casting elements :
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32,825
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32,825
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- Same -
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|
Mold elements :
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880,672
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250,013
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72% fewer mold elements
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|
Total elements :
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913,497
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282,838
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69% fewer total elements
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|
Total nodes :
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920,978
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208,987
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77% fewer total nodes
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Sol. analysis time :
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688 seconds
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160 seconds
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4.3x faster
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Our new variable mesh density capability significantly impacts the efficiency of the simulation. For verification, we plotted temperature results from the solidification analysis on each mesh, shown below. The first image uses the old mesh (notice the uniform element size), and the second uses the new mesh:
As you can see, the temperature distribution of each mesh is essentially identical. This new capability improves the efficiency of the simulation without impacting it's accuracy.
Port to Microsoft Windows to be Released 1 January 2005.
In this newsletter, we'd like to officially announce that we have decided to port our software to run on the Windows platform. Specifically, we will support Windows NT/2000/XP, and the software will run natively on windows - no unix emulation or remote access will be required. For you nonbelievers, here's a screen shot of the software running on windows:
We anticipate having working copies of the code ported to Windows by the 1st of January 2005. We will continue to support the Unix versions of our software.
Did you know that you can add text to the screen in CAPOST? Try Post: Add/Remove Labels. With this function, you can enter any text that you would like to display in an image exported from CAPOST. After clicking Accept, you can place your text by clicking anywhere in the drawing area of CAPOST. These labels will remain on the screen until you click Clear.
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