VISTAGY Donates FiberSIM® Software to UMass Amherst College of Engineering

Donation will enhance university’s ability to conduct research in composites manufacturing and provide new learning opportunities for students.

WALTHAM, Mass — VISTAGY, Inc., a leading provider of industry-specific engineering software and services, today announced the donation of 10 FiberSIM composites engineering software licenses to the UMass Amherst College of Engineering. Leading manufacturers in the aerospace, automotive, wind, and marine industries use FiberSIM software to support the unique and complex design and manufacturing methodologies necessary to engineer innovative composite products.

“FiberSIM is clearly the number one composites engineering software so this donation by VISTAGY, an industry pioneer and leader, enhances our ability to conduct cutting edge research in composites manufacturing and will provide new knowledge in the research and educational programs for our students,” said Ted Djaferis, dean of the College of Engineering.

“It will also enable our faculty and students to gain a greater understanding of the design process for highly complex engineering products, such as wind turbine blades, medical devices, and aerospace parts.”

There are a number of individuals and organizations that will benefit from using FiberSIM. Researchers in the Wind Energy Center will be able to perfect their design of wind turbine blades. The Center for e-design can use the software to explore ways to model some of the manufacturability information that FiberSIM enables design engineers to capture in the native CAD tool using formal information modeling techniques. Newly hired faculty member Frank Sup will be able to use the software to improve the design of robotic prosthetic devices. The undergraduate team that designs and builds the super mileage vehicle each year can use FiberSIM to optimize the carbon fiber body. And students in the graduate introduction to Finite Element Analysis (FEA) course will be able to use it to develop more accurate FEA models.

This donation continues VISTAGY’s dedication to promoting engineering excellence at UMass Amherst, while advancing composites technology in general. The use of composites is growing rapidly but this growth represents only a small percentage of the potential. The potential is fragmented because materials and processes; shapes, sizes, and tolerances; part definitions, and outputs are becoming more industry-specific. In fact, composite parts and assemblies can be as different in shape, size, and makeup as a two-inch long guiding vane for a jet engine or a 200-foot long wind turbine blade.

“As new industries embrace composites and the range of materials and processes continues to expand, the design and manufacturing challenges are becoming far more complicated,” said Steve Luby, president and CEO of VISTAGY and a UMass Amherst College of Engineering graduate. “Being able to understand and surmount the challenges on an industry-by-industry basis will be crucial, so we are delighted to have the opportunity to help prepare future generations of UMass Amherst engineers to meet these complex and evolving challenges.”