Product Engineers can efficiently evaluate structural product performance under a wide range of physical scenarios using the powerful virtual testing environment of SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional. Fully embedded with SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD, SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional enables engineers to determine product mechanical resistance, product durability, natural frequencies, and test heat transfer and buckling instabilities. Pressure vessel analysis and complex loading is also supported. You can optimize products for weight, vibration, or instability based on a range of physical and geometrical parameters. With tight integration and a consistent user interface across SOLIDWORKS solutions, you can use the powerful capabilities of SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional early in the design process to maximize product quality and reduce costs.
Video: First Look SOLIDWORKS Simulation
Easily investigate the impact of cooling and design changes on component temperatures using thermal fluid analysis in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation. You can quickly determine the impact of fluids flowing in and around the design to ensure correct thermal performance, product quality, and safety.
Tightly integrated with SOLIDWORKS CAD, thermal fluid analysis using SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation can be a regular part of your design process—reducing the need for costly prototypes, eliminating rework or delays, and saving time and development costs.
Thermal fluid analysis enables analysis of conjugate heat transfer (thermal conduction in solids, convection between fluid and solid, and radiation) using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) so you can:
Detect hot spots in their designs
Reduce overheating challenges
Improve thermal isolation
Leverage thermal performance in their products
SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation calculates either the steady state or transient temperature fields due to:
Heat transfer in solids (conduction)
Free, forced, and mixed convection
Radiation
Heat sources (heat generation rate, heat power, temperature)
Temperature fields can be exported to SOLIDWORKS Simulation for a thermal stress analysis.
Perform structural optimization analysis during design using CAD-embedded SOLIDWORKS Simulation to reach the best available strength-to-weight, frequency, or stiffness performance for your designs, and cut costly prototypes, eliminate rework and save time and development costs.
SOLIDWORKS Simulation simplifies structural optimization with a goal-driven design approach to parametrically alter a design so that it meets defined structural goals. You specify design goals at the beginning of design to:
Have SOLIDWORKS software alert you during the design process if goals are violated
Use goals in a design study where SOLIDWORKS Simulation automatically changes allowable model dimensions to maximize or minimize adherence to the design goal
Structural optimization uses multiple constraints to limit the scope of the optimization process, ensuring that any design study optimization meets the primary design goal without violating the supporting design requirements.
There are two types of motion analysis, kinematic and dynamic:
Kinematic analysis studies how your design moves due to forces and motions drivers applied to the assembly. The key results of interest are the assembly range of motion and determining part displacements, velocities, and accelerations.
Dynamic motion analysis evaluates the forces generated by movement, as well as the movement itself.
Motion analysis can be solved using two different solution paradigms, time based motion and event based motion:
In a time-based analysis, external actions occur at a pre-set time irrespective of the assembly motion.
In an event based motion analysis, the motion of the assembly triggers the external action.
Conduct detailed motion analysis and evaluate the mechanical performance of your design using CAD-embedded SOLIDWORKS Simulation, SOLIDWORKS Motion, and finite element analysis (FEA).
SOLIDWORKS motion analysis uses the assembly mates along with part contacts and a robust physics-based solver to accurately determine the physical movements of an assembly under load. With the assembly motion and forces calculated, a structural analysis of the components can be performed to ensure product performance.
The vibrations your product may experience can reduce performance, shorten product life, or even cause a catastrophic failure. The effects of vibrations, which are simply time-varying or transient loads on your product, are difficult to predict:
Vibration loads can excite dynamic responses in a structure resulting in high dynamic stresses.
Ignoring dynamic stresses could lead you to assume that a product or structure has a higher factor of safety (FoS) than it actually does.
CAD-embedded SOLIDWORKS Simulation enables every designer and engineer to carry out thermal analysis at any stage of design to ensure that every component and assembly performs properly within expected temperature ranges, and spot safety issues before they arise.
Thermal analysis calculates the temperature and heat transfer within and between components in your design and its environment. This is an important consideration of design, as many products and material have temperature dependent properties. Product safety is also a consideration—if a product or component gets too hot, you may have to design a guard over it.
The heat flow through the components can be in a steady state (where the heat flow does not change over time) or transient in nature. The thermal analogy of a linear static analysis is a steady-state thermal analysis, while a dynamic structural analysis is analogous to a transient thermal analysis.
Heat transfer problems can be solved using structural and fluid flow analysis methods:
In a thermal structural analysis, the effect of the moving air or a moving liquid is approximated by a series of boundary conditions or loads.
In a thermal fluid analysis, the effect of the air or a liquid is calculated, increasing the run time but also increasing to overall solution accuracy.
Nonlinear stress analysis with SOLIDWORKS Simulation enables designers and engineers to quickly and efficiently analyze stresses and deformations under general conditions while they are creating their design to ensure high quality, performance, and safety.
Tightly integrated with SOLIDWORKS CAD, nonlinear stress analysis using SOLIDWORKS Simulation can be a regular part of your design process. You can use the Simulation results to validate your part or assembly while you are designing, reducing the need for costly prototypes, eliminating rework and delays, and saving time and development costs.
Nonlinear stress analysis calculates the stresses and deformations of products under the most general loading and material conditions for:
Dynamic (time dependent) loads
Large component deformations
Nonlinear materials, such as rubber or metals, beyond their yield point
Nonlinear analysis is a more complex approach, but results in a more accurate solution than linear analysis, if the basic assumptions of a linear analysis are violated. If the linear analysis assumptions are not violated, then the results of a linear and nonlinear analysis will be the same.
The time component when carrying out a nonlinear analysis is important, both in controlling the loading (individual load components can be active at different times) and in capturing the response to an impulse load of impact. SOLIDWORKS Simulation provides either an automatic or a manual time control method with a force, displacement, or arc length convergence control. You get power and flexibility to solve challenging and complex simulation problems simply in a straightforward manner.
SOLIDWORKS Simulation uses finite element analysis (FEA) methods to discretize design components into solid, shell, or beam elements and uses nonlinear stress analysis to determine the response of parts and assemblies due to the effect of:
Forces
Pressures
Accelerations
Temperatures
Contact between components
Loads can be imported from thermal and motion Simulation studies to perform multiphysics analysis.
In order to carry out stress analysis, component material data must be known. The standard SOLIDWORKS CAD material database is pre-populated with materials that can be used by SOLIDWORKS Simulation, and the database is easily customizable to include your particular material requirements.
Efficiently optimize and validate each design step using fast-solving, CAD integrated SOLIDWORKS Simulation to ensure quality, performance, and safety.
Tightly integrated with SOLIDWORKS CAD, SOLIDWORKS Simulation solutions and capabilities can be a regular part of your design process—reducing the need for costly prototypes, eliminating rework and delays, and saving time and development costs.
SOLIDWORKS Simulation uses the displacement formulation of the finite element method to calculate component displacements, strains, and stresses under internal and external loads. The geometry under analysis is discretized using tetrahedral (3D), triangular (2D), and beam elements, and solved by either a direct sparse or iterative solver. SOLIDWORKS Simulation can use either an h or p adaptive element type, providing a great advantage to designers and engineers as the adaptive method ensures that the solution has converged.
Integrated with SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD, finite element analysis using SOLIDWORKS Simulation knows the exact geometry during the meshing process. And the more accurately the mesh matches the product geometry, the more accurate the analysis results will be.
The majority of FEA calculations involve metallic components, just as the majority of industrial components are made of metal. The analysis of metal components can be carried out by either linear or nonlinear stress analysis. Which analysis approach you use depends upon how far you want to push the design:
If you want to ensure the geometry remains in the linear elastic range (that is, once the load is removed, the component returns to its original shape), then linear stress analysis may be applied, as long as the rotations and displacements are small relative to the geometry. For such an analysis, factor of safety (FoS) is a common design goal.
Evaluate the effects of post-yield load cycling on the geometry, a nonlinear stress analysis should be carried out. In this case, the impact of strain hardening on the residual stresses and permanent set (deformation) is of most interest.
The analysis of nonmetallic components (such as, plastic or rubber parts) should be carried out using nonlinear stress analysis methods (link to SOLIDWORKS Nonlinear Stress Analysis capability page), due to their complex load deformation relationship.
SOLIDWORKS Simulation uses FEA methods to calculate the displacements and stresses in your product due to operational loads such as:
Forces
Pressures
Accelerations
Temperatures
Contact between components
Loads can be imported from thermal, flow, and motion Simulation studies to perform multiphysics analysis.
Linear stress analysis with SOLIDWORKS Simulation enables designers and engineers to quickly and efficiently validate quality, performance, and safety—all while creating their design.
Tightly integrated with SOLIDWORKS CAD, linear stress analysis using SOLIDWORKS Simulation can be a regular part of your design process, reducing the need for costly prototypes, eliminating rework and delays, and saving time and development costs.
Linear stress analysis calculates the stresses and deformations of geometry given three basic assumptions:
The part or assembly under load deforms with small rotations and displacements
The product loading is static (ignores inertia) and constant over time
The material has a constant stress strain relationship (Hooke’s law)
SOLIDWORKS Simulation uses finite element analysis (FEA) methods to discretize design components into solid, shell, or beam elements and uses linear stress analysis to determine the response of parts and assemblies due to the effect of:
Forces
Pressures
Accelerations
Temperatures
Contact between components
Loads can be imported from thermal, flow, and motion Simulation studies to perform multiphysics analysis.
In order to carry out stress analysis, component material data must be known. The standard SOLIDWORKS CAD material database is pre-populated with materials that can be used by SOLIDWORKS Simulation, and the database is easily customizable to include your particular material requirements.
Carry out fatigue analysis and predict component fatigue failures during the design phase with CAD-embedded SOLIDWORKS Simulation. You can then adjust your design or define a preventive maintenance schedule to reduce warranty costs and maximize product life.
Fatigue analysis examines how repeated or random load cycles can cause structural failure (so called metal fatigue). SOLIDWORKS Simulation enables designers to take two, complementary approaches to design analysis:
Design for Strength: Traditionally in failure analysis, designers consider the ultimate strength of their components; but in-service load is rarely static in nature as there is usually a cyclical variation.
Design for Life: Adding this approach, you can utilize finite element analysis (FEA) to predict and address causes of failure.
CAD-embedded SOLIDWORKS Simulation enables every designer and engineer to carry out structural simulation on parts and assemblies with finite element analysis (FEA) while they work to improve and validate performance and reduce the need for costly prototypes or design changes later on.
Structural simulation covers a wide range of FEA problems—from the performance of a part under a constant load to the stress analysis of a moving assembly under dynamic loading, all of which can be determined using SOLIDWORKS Simulation tools.
Designers and engineers primarily use structural simulation to determine the strength and stiffness of a product by reporting component stress and deformations. The type of structural analysis you perform depends on the product being tested, the nature of the loads, and the expected failure mode:
A short/stocky structure will most likely fail due to material failure (that is, the yield stress is exceeded).
A long slender structure will fail due to structural instability (geometric buckling).
With time dependent loads, the structure will require some form of dynamic analysis to analyze component strength.
The component material you use can also influence which type of analysis you perform:
Metallic components, under moderate loads, generally require some form of linear analysis, where the material has a linear relationship between the part deformation and the applied load below the materials yield point
Rubber and plastics require a nonlinear analysis, as elastomers have a nonlinear relationship between the part deformation and the applied load. This is also the case for metals beyond their yield point.