Clemson University Center and ANSYS Shift Engineering Innovation into High Gear with Preferred Partnership

Computational Center for Mobility Systems Using ANSYS Simulation Software for Industry R&D.

SOUTHPOINTE, Pa - ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, and Clemson University, a top-tier research institution, today announced an agreement under which ANSYS® software will be deployed as the preferred solution for engineering simulation at the Clemson University Computational Center for Mobility Systems (CU-CCMS). The center’s charter is to foster commercial innovation in automotive and other “mobility” industries, such as aviation/aerospace and energy. CU-CCMS works with commercial and government organizations, as well as world-class academic researchers, that want to push the boundaries of engineering simulation.

“What makes our center unique is that we operate according to the private sector’s needs: meeting accelerated deadlines; significantly reducing overall design cycle times; focusing on complex challenges that involve entire systems, which require far greater computational resources; and performing high-fidelity analyses that bring together multiple physics in an iterative way to produce an optimal design,” said James Leylek, executive director of CU-CCMS. The center is combining its novel organizational structure with dedicated supercomputing facilities and unique computational methods to help commercial organizations take product innovation to the next level. “We searched for a proven leader in engineering simulation, one that is already highly regarded by industry and well known for outstanding service and support. Making ANSYS our key simulation software partner provides CU-CCMS with the flexible, powerful and seamlessly integrated set of tools we need to focus on innovation and R&D for industry,” Leylek continued.

CU-CCMS will use the multiphysics suite of software from ANSYS — which includes structural, fluid flow, heat transfer, electromagnetics and many other tools — to develop methodologies and demonstrate feasibility of ground-breaking simulations in key technology areas. The suite’s adaptive architecture enables software customization specific to project or industry, and its scalability on high-performance computing (HPC) systems will enable high-fidelity simulations and optimization approaches. For example, such a simulation involves the combined use of CU-CCMS' in-house models and ANSYS software to account for unsteady, curvature, rotation and transitional boundary layer effects in the prediction of solid–fluid interactions encountered in many automotive, aviation and aerospace applications.

“Our partnership with CU-CCMS is about helping companies take the next step. The expertise and resources at the center will help commercial clients to develop engineering design solutions once thought out of reach and to increase the value of simulation for innovative product design and development,” said Jim Cashman, president and CEO at ANSYS, Inc. “We are looking forward to a research/industry collaboration that will help ANSYS and our customers achieve breakthroughs in Simulation Driven Product Development™.”

Software from ANSYS will be installed on the CU-CCMS high-performance computing facility, which includes a Linux® cluster of Sun® 6250 blades, with peak theoretical performance of 35 Teraflops on more than 3,440 processing cores and 14 TBytes of RAM. This system, ranked as one of the world's most powerful computers on the latest “TOP-500 Supercomputers” list, is carefully balanced to include servers with large RAM for pre- and post-processing, a 20 GBit/sec Infiniband® network by Voltaire, and parallel I/O software and hardware by Panasas®. The combined Sun HPC hardware and ANSYS software installation will allow CU-CCMS to address highly detailed simulations involving complex physical phenomena and explore the use of simulation for design optimization by industry.

The collaboration between CU-CCMS and ANSYS will be highlighted in further detail today at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) 2009 World Congress in Detroit, Michigan at 2:30 p.m. at the Clemson University booth, #530.