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The world has shifted

The current global events is expected to have a significant impact on operating models and business dynamics. Organizations will have to adapt to the new normal and prime themselves for growth in a new environment.

Here are a few quotes from industry experts:

“The COVID-19 Pandemic is fast-tracking Digital Transformation in companies” – Forbes

“Global companies have to be predictive and proactive in their decision-making to preserve business continuity and build enterprise resilience” – Ernest Young

“Generating value while restarting your supply chain” – Bain & Company

“Its not business as usual, so don’t do business as usual” – Gains Group

This is specifically true for a company’s supply chains which are facing multiple challenges. So how does an organization respond to these challenges and reset a supply chain to make it robust and future proof?

Complex scenarios for Supply Chain Reset

It is clear that there will be two major trends for manufacturing companies when it comes to supply chains:

• A dramatic shift from cost-focused single region limited supply chains to global distributed and diversified supply chains
• Manufacturing will move from specialized and limited product lines to robust and scalable production lines that can be quickly repurposed

In addition to these trends, Enterprises are facing additional complexities:

• Current global distributed supplier networks and logistics challenges are an imminent threat to supply continuity, leading to a domino impact on supplies, spare parts and production
• To secure liquidity, the Just-in-Time production strategy has to adapt quickly to demand fluctuations while accommodating the uncertainties across supply chains
• Stressed supplier health concerns demand purchase teams to re-evaluate sourcing considerations of supplier health, quality and near term continuity to sustain suppliers

Recognizing the complex supply-demand balance

Apart from the complex scenarios laid out above, supply chain management in the complex new world face multiple uncertainties:

• Supply chain disruptions – there could be prolonged shutdowns across multiple supply hubs in the world. Also there could be restrictions of movement of parts due to travel restrictions
• Distressed Suppliers – Many suppliers may be facing financial constraints and liquidity problems. This will force organizations to seek alternatives
• Sourcing Concentration – Dependence on a single geographic source for supply chains and no clear strategy on mitigation measures
• Demand Uncertainties – Volatile markets create an uncertain demand and this impacts the entire value chain of a business along with suppliers

A first step – Supply Chain Stress Assessment

So how does an organization start along the road of Supply Chain Diversification and create a network of suppliers that can thrive in the new normal?

The first step is a well orchestrated assessment that fully recognizes the in depth exposure a business has to its current supply chain:

• Account for all inventory – in-transit, warehouses, spares, inventory buffer
• Work with immediate suppliers to qualify risks to their suppliers
• Build “outside in” analytics for all suppliers
• Run supply chain stress test vs supplier balance sheet to understand vunrabilites
• Asses whether current or future movement restrictions will disrupt the supply chain
• Conduct scenario planning to understand how inventory buffer changes will respond to various demand scenarios
• Task supply chain and operations teams to build multiple plans of supply versus demand and how the plans will play out

A second step – ReSeT

Tata Technologies has devised a framework for an organization to reset its supply chain strategy – ReSeT.

OEM’s need to identify immediate system Restart challenges, devise action plans to Stabilize operations in the medium term and equip themselves to Thrive in the new normal by de-risking supply chains. Business as usual “won’t” be as usaul anymore. To thrive, organizations have to adapt to the new normal

Three Horizons of ReSeT

So what are the actions required for the three horizons?

• Accounting of Inventory: In-transit
• Supplier-Assessment: sustained supply in near term and long term
• Logistics capacity estimation and downstream collaboration with 3PL

• Alternative Suppliers or distressed supplier management to meet demand
• Movement of assets like tooling and fixtures to new suppliers
• Leverage digital tools to enhance upstream and downstream customer collaboration

• De-risk supply chain trough strategic expansion of local and geographic supply chain
• Build digital and analytics capabilities for predictive monitoring and supply demand matching
• Ensure seamless and secure communication with suppliers so that they react to changing circumstances

Tata Technologies – a trusted partner

Tata Technologies brings deep expertise in engineering services and complete digital solutions to assist business navigate through the supply chain rationalize challenges

Tata Technologies has developed a holistic set of tools for supply chain diversification – Optimized Supply Chain and Risk Assessment

• Assessments of Supply Health, Logistics and Inventory Management
• Supplier Monitoring, Supplier on-boarding, Demand and supply simulations
• Supply de-risking strategies, Cost optimization, VAVE, Forecasting tools
• Digital expertise to build robust systems

OSCAR consists of a combination of digital accelerators and industry expertise.
For a more detailed demonstration, contact Tata Technologies. Or visit our website at tatatechnologies.com

Dassault Systemes users are well familiar with 3DExperience rock N roll initiative that has been well perceived so far. The concept behind it is two fold: collaboration and integration. That means if all project stakeholders are using a single application, they can communicate with each other much more seamlessly than otherwise. The collaboration and integration include all aspects of data management spanning over design objects, simulation objects, PLM documents, project management, program management etc. This is a big transformation from DS offerings few years back that included disconnected point solutions such as CATIA V5 for design, Abaqus for simulation, Delmia for manufacturing, Smarteam for data management and others. If we look at simulation in specific, its worth mentioning that this transformation is not pertinent to Dassault Systemes but to simulation industrial landscape in general. Let’s see what others have been doing recently in simulation space:

SIEMENS: One of the big players in Simulation space is Siemens. In January 2007, Siemens officially announced the acquisition of Unigraphics Systems referred to as UGS. Subsequently UGS FEMAP and NX Nastran offerings from its PLM wing became Siemens assets. Gradually and efficiently Siemens bifurcated its NX Nastran solver offerings: one as a stand alone solver with and without FEMAP and other as a collaborative solver embedded in NX and coupled with Teamcenter data management engine. It is called Simcenter 3D which is considered a competitor of 3DExperience platform simulation roles.

ANSYS: In terms of Revenue, ANSYS is the biggest player in simulation space. ANSYS has always been a simulation only company since its inception in 1971. Its traditional product has been ANSYS Classic that included a dedicated Pre-Processor coupled with FEA solvers for specialized analysts. ANSYS made its first move in designer space many years ago by introducing ANSYS workbench. It offers a much easier GUI based process automation compared to complex APDL language approach. In 2014 ANSYS acquired a 3D modeling application called SpaceClaim. This tool helps to idealize and defeature CAD geometry and make it more suitable for downstream simulation applications. In 2019 ANSYS acquired Granta Design, a material intelligence application having plethora of design and simulation material data. All these efforts have been geared to integrate design and simulation though ANSYS never had a robust SLM or PLM engine of its own other than Minerva.

AUTODESK: In December 2008, Autodesk acquired ALGOR, a small and standalone simulation company that offered a dedicated pre-processor and non-linear solver for simple to moderately complex FEA problems. In May 2014, Autodesk acquired yet another FEA solver called Nei Nastran well known in linear dynamics space. These two acquisitions made Autodesk well equipped with a linear and non linear FEA solvers. Subsequently Autodesk integrated these solvers with its Autodesk inventor CAD tools. These solvers are now offered as designer friendly CAD embedded finite element analysis software. This shows a dedicated effort from Autodesk towards design and simulation integration.

For a more detailed demonstration, contact Tata Technologies. Or visit our website at tatatechnologies.com

See how NX Sheetmetal design can be used to improve productivity and enhance the sheetmetal design process

A Virtual Journey in 3DEXPERIENCE

Today’s manufacturers are confronting a rapidly changing business environment. The new reality and relentless competition are having companies re-examine their business models. On Shoring, Near Shoring and diversified Supply Chains are just some of the topics that companies and leaders want to know about.

Tata Technologies has extensive knowledge and expertise in implementing manufacturing technology that will help meet these challenges. We partner with Dassault Systemes to bring world class solutions to our customers.

Launching on July 29th, 3DEXPERIENCE: A Virtual Journey, is an online series designed to help companies transform their business with episodes focusing on industry leading strategy and insight – ready to stream anytime, anywhere. Discover how to bring together all aspects of business to increase collaboration, improve execution and accelerate the transformation to full digital continuity. Learn how to make your business accessible from anywhere with real-time collaboration for your entire team

Register now and join us July 29th for the live plenary session at 1:00 EDT. This will be followed by release of episode 1 –
3DEXPERIENCE: A Virtual Journey

Analysts are analysts and they have an analytical mindset. So whenever a traditional Abaqus user is exposed to a radically different application such as 3D Experience platform, he looks at it with intricacy. The level of inquiry is high and meshing is always one concern that cannot be skipped. Quite often this discussion ends up in a comparison between 3DX meshing and Abaqus CAE or between 3DX meshing and third party meshing applications. This blog is around comparison between the Abaqus CAE and 3DX meshing capabilities. I have tried to make as many apples with apples comparison as possible by taking same part as reference in both the environments.

Take a look at the frame structure. It’s a thin solid part that has been meshed in Abaqus CAE as well as in 3DX. The frame has been partitioned at many sections to get maximum hexahedral elements. When this frame is taken in Abaqus CAE mesh module, it looks like this: The green region is structural mesh domain and yellow regions is sweep mesh domain. However, both of these approaches give a hexahedral mesh.

When the same part is taken in 3D Experience platform, there are bunch of meshing tools in the meshing app. However, the one most straightforward for use without as many partitions as used in CAE is the partition hex mesh approach. The technique shows the following color code.

Its worth mentioning here that in 3DX the yellow represents the sweep mesh region and orange represents the free mesh regions. This is different coding from CAE where orange represents region that cannot be meshed. The mesh looks as below with 75 percent hexahedral and 25 percent tetrahedral elements.

Conclusion: Using very similar meshing techniques of partition, we get different kinds of meshes in the two applications. At the same time, using a different design method with no partitions, it is possible to get all hexahedral elements in 3DX.

Its also worth to show here all the meshing methods in 3DX meshing app. While few of these are available in CAE as well, other such as partition hex mesh and hex dominant mesh do not. At the same time, CAE offers bottom’s up meshing method that does not exist in 3DX. So meshing comparison between 3DX and Abaqus CAE is indeed an apple with orange comparison.

To find out more or schedule a demonstration, contact us or visit our website at www.tatatechnologies.com

One thing common between SIMULIA roles of 3DExperience platform and the standalone Abaqus products is that both require an Abaqus solver to perform computations. It further means that both solutions require Abaqus tokens to complete or speed up the computation part of the simulation. For standalone abaqus product, we know that the calculation is straight forward. Abaqus requires a minimum of five tokens to execute a single core non-linear job. Large models require more number of cores to solve in real time and more number of cores require more tokens as follows:

The computation capacity of 3D Experience platform, however, cannot be defined by a single equation. Unlike Abaqus solver, that is available as an integrated all-in-one license for all types of simulations such as standard, CFD, explicit etc., 3D Experience offerings are in form of roles. Each role is a sellable license that includes either some or all Abaqus solver capabilities. Offers are made further flexible by on premise vs. on cloud offerings. Let’s have a look at solver offerings in different configurations and roles.

    Designer role vs. Analyst role

While most of design engineer roles have embedded Abaqus tokens, most of the analyst roles do not have any compute capacity at all. The number of tokens embedded in designer role depends on the level of simulation complexity a role can accommodate. For example

                     Structural designer role has 8 embedded tokens to accommodate up-to 4 cores job

      Structural professional engineer role has 12 embedded tokens to accommodate up-to 8 cores job

It is possible to submit jobs on more number of cores than what embedded solver permits but in that situation external tokens need to be utilized and embedded solver takes no credit at all.

                Tokens vs. Hours

In case of analyst roles such as stress analyst, fluid mechanics analyst etc., the role itself does not have any compute capacity which should be procured either in the form of tokens or credits. Tokens are renewable form of compute capacity which means they can be used over and over. 3D Experience uses tokens in a very similar fashion as does standalone Abaqus. The token consumption with respect to number of cores is the same for Abaqus as for 3D Experience platform. On the contrary compute hours are a non-renewable form of compute power. It means that hours, just like the talk time over phone, can be consumed only once.

       Why compute hours at all!!!

In general compute hours is an expensive preposition for customer but there are exceptions. Compute hours are utilized to meet unexpected and rare increase in peak usage. This is somewhat more common in engineering consulting firms that can face high demand of simulation capacity due to influx of many short duration simulation projects at any time. To meet this sudden spike in demand, one-time compute hours bundle offering makes more sense than increase in perpetual tokens. Once peak demand is over and credits are consumed, simulation capacity is returned to normal levels. 

On premise vs. on cloud

Design engineer as well as analyst roles are available in on premise as well as on cloud formats. There are three ways of utilizing cloud resources: store the models on cloud, stores the results on cloud and solve on cloud. The first two offerings require only cloud storage and are available at no additional charge with cloud based license. However, the third offering requires cloud compute resources that consumes compute hours in addition to cloud based license.

Need to know more about SIMULIA 3D Experience platform compute capacity! Please visit our website at www.tatatechnologies.com

Best in class stamping die design tool

Stamping Die design is complicated. Designers must juggle complex requirements such as draw direction, parting surface, folded features and progressive steps. Stamping simulation results must be incorporated. And lead times keep reducing

CATIA Stamping Die Designer, increases productivity by guiding users from the conceptual planning through to detailed tooling design of complex stamped sheet metal parts

Early concept method planning allows designers to anticipate manufacturing constraints and facilitate collaboration between design, tooling and the supply chain organizations. Easy to use specialist features and wizards guide the user in best practices, helping the tool designer work with and extend complex surfaces without having to be a surfacing expert

CATIA has a discipline-specific set of functions for the optimization of stamping direction, creation of addenda surfaces, trim lines and spring-back compensation, all with full associativity to the original part geometry. This ensures high quality die geometry and right-first –time tooling

Benefits

• High productivity with specialized wizard and features
• Intuitive and process oriented
• Facilitate design for manufacturing with early process engineering
• Die face method planning
• Conceptual die surface design to enable quick validation
• Simplify and automate the tool compensation from simulation inputs
• High quality surfaces for manufacturing

Highlights

• Best stamping direction selection with optimization
• Quick (KPI) analysis of draft, depth and cutout
• Define and easily modify the concept method planning (stamp process flow)
• Specialized and global deformation features to manage spring-back & structural tool compensation process from simulation results
• Unfold flange as trimline or surface
• Addenda surface based on high quality surface extensions and profiles
• Trim Line cut analysis with key indicators
• Efficient assembly design with reusable mechanical components

What’s New

• Concept wizard to design complete method plan.
• Embedded draft/depth/cutting angle analysis in process wizard
• Press Line positioning of geometries on custom press line.
• In Car positioning of parts in design
• Wall surface creation based on sketch of lines
• High quality surface extensions G1, G2 or Hybrid G1/G2
• Wizard for generative hole filling with solution selection and embedded quality checker
• Trim line concept with automatic split of input part boundary

Return on Investment

• Achieved time savings of 20% across the initial die design process.
• Improved whole design process time by 50%
• Reduced the time to incorporate changes from DAYS to hours

To find out more or schedule a demonstration, contact us or visit our website at www.tatatechnologies.com

Previous few blog articles primarily addressed Abaqus 2020x enhancements. Let’s have a look at the extended products enhancements that include ISight, Tosca and FeSafe.

ISight Enhancements

• Export of Approximations: Till 2019x release, the export of approximation models was limited to coefficient data or excel spreadsheet format. In 2020x release, the RBF and RSM approximation models can be exported to FMU as well.
• New components: Functional Mock Up (FMU) and Computer Simulation Technology (CST) components are now available in ISight workflows.

Tosca Enhancements

• Sensitivities support: Though not essentially an enhancement in 2020x, it is worth mentioning that all four modules of Tosca now accept Abaqus sensitivities for all types of non-linearities. However, supported analysis steps are Static and Frequency only. Inertia relief included.

• New Response: Plastic strain PEMAG now supported for shape, size and bead optimization.
• Algorithm stabilized: Higher volume fractions eventually lead to convergence and stability concerns. While convergence is an Abaqus issue, stability of optimization has been improved in topology module with large volume fractions.

Fe-Safe Enhancements in 3DX:

• App enhancement: While the role is still a separate license called as durability engineer role, the mechanical and structural scenario have been enhanced to include the fatigue interface.

Simultaneous execution: Though it is well understood that any fe-safe analysis requires stress results from a stress analysis, user now has an option to simulate both structural and durability cases at the same time. The backend data management architecture takes care of sequencing and linking.

• Material enhancement: The entire Fe-safe material database can now be imported in the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. Surface finish factors supported as well.
• Element nodal outputs: This is perhaps a KEY enhancement. The fatigue is a surface phenomenon so averaged stresses at the nodes on surface are most appropriate for fatigue analysis. In prior releases of 3DX, only integration point stresses were supported. Starting 2019x FD06, element nodal stresses are available for fatigue.
• Loading enhancements: Loading blocks now include residual stresses as well as implicit dynamics step. All Fe-Safe algorithms with and without mean stress correction are now supported. Both SN curve as well as EN curve algorithms are now supported in 3DX.
• Coming Soon!! Linux and COS execution on cloud.

Visit www.tatatechnologies.com to learn more about our PLM offerings and how we can help customers use the best technology for their needs.

This is a relatively bigger blog compared to previous ones because of an obvious reason; it covers a broad spectrum of non-linear enhancements which is Abaqus core technology. The blog covers four sections: additive manufacturing, element technology, material enhancements and fracture mechanics along with few other minor enhancements

Additive manufacturing:

• Pattern based thermo-mechanical analysis: While in many cases laser scan paths are available to simulation users it is not always true. For those situations in which machine users do not wish to share their machine IP’s, a pattern based approach has been introduced which uses a raster scan path instead of a trajectory scan path. Material orientation and Anisotropic behavior are supported but not suitable for detailed microstructure simulation. This application is different from eigen strain simulation.
• Event series enhancement: 2GB data size limit of event series was removed in 2019xGA and now event series can include up-to 420 million events.
• Free surface evolution enhancements: In case of tie constraints, algorithm has been enhanced to include ties that are not activated until the underlying element becomes active.
• Output enhancements: MAXPSCRT has been introduced to include maximum principal stress crack initiation criterion. It is available for both field and history outputs. BLADEINTERFERER has been introduced to predict clash between recoater and printed part. This will be available in 2020xFD01.

Element Technology:

• Shear panel element update: SHEAR4 was introduced in 209xFD01 to model thin reinforced plates. It supports buckling. Equivalent shear flow output called SQEQ is supported.
• Pyramid heat transfer element: DC3D5 has been introduced to manage transition between tetrahedral and hexahedral elements in thermal analysis.
• Fluid pipe element enhancements: These elements now support following Non Newtonian flows as well:

Material enhancements:

• VUMAT enhancement: A parameter has been added to define alternate bulk and shear modulus that can be used by explicit to find suitable time increment. It is called EFFMOD and visible in viewer. Abaqus CAE support is available from 2020xFD01.

• Kinematic hardening enhancement: The material model has been enhanced to model stress relaxation behavior for metals subjected to step strain input. Suitable for metals that show viscoelastic like behavior during step inputs.

Creep Laws enhancement: Current creep models have A with dimensionality that creates ambiguity. The strain and time laws have been enhanced as follows to make A dimensionless. These enhancements are applicable to all the creep models.

Viscoelastic material enhancement: The prony series has now been enhanced to include frequency domain as well. Earlier prony series was valid in time domain only.

Yield surface enhancement: The non quadratic yield surface has been introduced in 2019xFD04. It is referred to as Barlat Plasticity. The stress component requires 18 coefficients and 1 exponent.

• Metallurgical phase enhancement: In prior releases, the effect of additive manufacturing and other heat treatment processes on material properties at microstructural level required USDFLD subroutine. Effective 2020xFD01, this routine has been included on the material definition itself. Inservice performance of printed parts can now be more accurately simulated.

Injection Molding:

• 3DX injection molding compatibility: The fiber orientation and residual stresses from third party simulation such as Moldflow can now be converted to a SIM file format. That means the 3DX structural simulation apps can now read moldflow results to predict in-service loads and warpage from third party plastic injection results.

Pre-tension enhancements

• Non linear enhancement: In earlier releases, the direction of pre-tension section normal was not updated even in general step. Effective 2020xGA, the cut section normal direction can be updated in large displacement or large rotation analysis. It is activated as follows in the input file

*PRE-TENSION SECTION, FOLLOWER = (YES/NO)

Fracture Mechanics enhancements

• Linear elastic fatigue enhancements: Linear elastic fatigue crack model was introduced recently in collaboration with NASA ACC team to model crack propagation for cyclic fatigue cycles. It allows for change in contact conditions as well as non-linear geometry effects. Several enhancements have been made in this model in recent FD’s. In 2019x FD03, an alternative method to smoothening of crack front was introduced. In 2019x FD04, mode dependent stiffness degradation was introduced.
• Cohesive elements for Multiphysics: Couples temperature-displacement cohesive elements have been introduced to simulate debonding due to thermal expansion as well as hydraulic fracture. These elements are COH2D4T, COHAX4T, COH3D6T, COH3D8T. Coupled temperature-displacement-pore pressure elements available as well to include gap conductance effect. There is no change in the structural response of these elements.

Visit www.tatatechnologies.com to learn more about our PLM offerings and how we can help customers use the best technology for their needs.