ANSYS and HBM-nCode Partner to Deliver Advanced Fatigue Capabilities

SOUTHPOINTE, Pa - ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANSS) today announced that it has partnered with HBM-nCode to provide an embedded version of nCode DesignLife™ within the ANSYS® Workbench™ environment. This OEM agreement with HBM-nCode, the leading developer of fatigue analysis software in the world, provides advanced fatigue capabilities within the open, flexible and CAD-integrated environment of ANSYS Workbench. As a result, engineers can efficiently apply ANSYS nCode DesignLife technology to help reduce product failure warranty claims and to improve product durability throughout its lifecycle.

Engineering simulation currently is being used to reduce initial product failures by providing more accurate stress analysis. “In most cases, today’s designs survive the initial deployment,” said Joe Solecki, vice president, physics business unit at ANSYS, Inc. “Since new products are, under ideal circumstances, optimized with regard to raw materials and manufacturing processes, this can affect their long-term durability; that is, consumers potentially use these products over longer periods — and often in more rigorous environments — than initially designed for.” A product may meet initial loads, but in-field failure can occur over time from stresses including repeated loads, dynamic forces, and rapidly applied loads. “Advanced fatigue analysis can address these issues, even before a prototype is ever built. Through the partnership with HBM-nCode, ANSYS adds to its already unparalleled breadth and depth of mechanical simulation tools,” Solecki added.

“For any company, the cost of in-service failures is enormous, and senior executives continually try to reduce warranty exposure,” said Steve Tudberry, vice president of nCode Software Products for HBM. “With increased focus on the current economic climate, companies must continue to find ways to increase product sales, control costs or release funds from reserves such as warranty offsets. The ANSYS and HBM-nCode partnership provides this additional financial course of action for executives and creates additional value to the end customer. This new product offers a strategic and substantial benefit to our joint customers answering durability questions through high-end fatigue analysis capabilities.”

The ANSYS nCode DesignLife family of products integrates advanced engineering simulation analysis and signal processing tools within a simple-to-use graphical workflow environment hosted inside the ANSYS Workbench platform. In addition to providing general stress-life and strain-life approaches, nCode DesignLife incorporates established methods for both spot and seam weld analysis. Vibration shaker tests can be directly simulated in the frequency domain. The product efficiently analyzes large finite element models and complete usage schedules. Fatigue material properties from the nCode DesignLife Material Library are available directly within the ANSYS Workbench environment, making fatigue analysis immediately accessible and providing a much larger material library to ANSYS Workbench users.

Hutchinson Industries, a U.S. manufacturer of vehicle mobility components such as runflat tires, has incorporated the nCode product into its design process. “Hutchinson looked at several life prediction technologies, and nCode had the best capability, features and ease-of-use that allowed easy integration into our existing ANSYS solution,” said Jim Koniers, senior project engineer at Hutchinson Industries. “Overall, nCode was the best fit to provide the highest quality results.”