A shell structure is thin in one direction and long in the other two directions. Shell structures are used in a variety of architectural and industrial applications as they are lightweight, can span large areas, and can be designed to be strong and stiff. Examples of shell structures include stadium roofs, airplane fuselages, ship hulls, automobile hoods and body panels, bridge decks, and oil tanks.

The paper “CAE Applications in Hydraulics — Experimental and Analytical Study of a Check-Valve, L. Leventhal, SAE 03NVC-377” contains an interesting application of our fluid-structure interaction code ADINA-FSI. ADINA-FSI is used as the tool in a parametric study of check-valve design features, and the parametric study is the basis for an improved check-valve design. Also a comparison is made between experimental data and the results from ADINA-FSI, and the comparison is very good.

On the launch of ADINA version 9.4 (ADINA 9.4) one year ago, it was announced that the new ADINA sparse solver released in ADINA 9.4 achieves considerable speedups with no compromise in accuracy. This speed increase is of great value to industry — in particular, the automotive, aerospace, defense, industrial equipment, heavy machinery, civil, and consumer product industries — that frequently need to run large, high-fidelity simulations.

A new meshing feature is present in ADINA 8.1 that enables the user to create a volume mesh from a collection of surface elements making up a closed volume. This is achieved without modifying the surface mesh. This feature is useful when a model is only represented by its external surface data (e.g., data from coordinate measuring machines, or CT scans). There are many potential applications, especially in the automotive and biomedical fields.

The FSI (fluid-structure interaction) solution capabilities of ADINA have been successfully applied to many applications in a wide range of industries over many decades. The ADINA FSI program uses the full capabilities of ADINA CFD and ADINA Structures, with solvers for full Navier-Stokes formulations of both compressible and incompressible fluids, Reynolds thin film fluids, porous medium fluids, etc. in the fluid model, and all the modeling and analytical tools available in ADINA Structures for the solid model.

The VOF surface-capturing method, available in ADINA 8.1, can be used to study the motion of bubbles due to buoyant and interfacial forces. The animation below shows the ascension of an air bubble in oil. Both the air and the oil are modeled as incompressible Newtonian fluids. The model is two-dimensional. The initial shape of the bubble is a 3 mm square. The oil container is 10 mm in width and 40 mm in height. The mesh has 17 x 67 quadrilateral FCBI (flow condition based interpolation) elements.

Robustness is an important requirement in nonlinear analysis. One of the requirements of a robust analysis code is that it obtains a realistic solution even with a coarse mesh. In engineering practice, the use of a coarse mesh should lead quickly to an approximate solution, especially in the case of a nonlinear analysis. There should be little need for experimenting with meshes just to obtain a realistic solution. Of course, with a robust analysis code, using a finer mesh always gives a more accurate solution.

A new meshing feature is present in ADINA 8.1 that enables the user to create a volume mesh from a collection of surface elements making up a closed volume. This is achieved without modifying the surface mesh. This feature is useful when a model is only represented by its external surface data (e.g., data from coordinate measuring machines, or CT scans). There are many potential applications, especially in the automotive and biomedical fields.

Sweden has 10 nuclear power reactors providing nearly half of its electricity. Due to the current concern for optimal energy sources, many Swedes consider nuclear power a good option when competitiveness and environmental impact are taken into account. As nuclear power carries the risk of toxic pollution, the safe, efficient operation and maintenance of the nuclear reactors is very important.