COMPOSITE ANALYSIS AND
STRUCTURAL SIZING SOFTWARE
STRUCTURAL SIZING SOFTWARE
HyperSizer is used throughout the design process--including certification--to quantify all critical failure modes, reduce structural weight, and sequence composite laminates for fabrication to avoid unexpected design problems and weight growth as the design matures. It provides a complete CAE software interface that is used from preliminary design to final analysis. The unified software standardizes the design process by automating the following tasks:
Preliminary Design Optimization, specializing in airframe fuselage, wing, and engine structures. Complete structures are modeled in HyperSizer with panel and beam concepts that are mapped directly to the finite element model on import.
Graphically represented by unique color regions on the FEM, finite elements are grouped together to represent panels and beams that share the same cross sectional dimensions and materials systems. Then HyperSizer performs sizing optimization to determine the lightest weight combination of material systems and cross sectional geometric dimensions (panel height, stiffener spacing, etc.) including layup ply angles and stacking sequences. Laminate optimization includes real-world manufacturing constraints that ensure designs are manufacturable by minimizing ply drops across sizing component boundaries and identifying and reducing the number of ply part numbers and process steps.
Final Analysis Margins of Safety Calculations, automating hundreds of industry standard failure analyses to evaluate the strength and stability of entire airframes to thousands of user-defined load cases.
Stress Report Documentation, for all failure modes that includes the analysis methods and calculations required for FAA airworthiness certification. Summary tables of controlling margins, load sets, and failure modes are included.
Test Data Validation, correlating failure analyses to test data by simply defining the load at which the test specimen failed. By integrating the test data failure loads with the analytical predictions, engineers are able to quickly establish and permanently maintain the record of prediction accuracy.
Whether using CAD (such as CATIA or Pro-E), a finite element modeler (such as Patran or Femap), or FEA (such as Nastran, Ansys or Abaqus), use HyperSizer with these tools to achieve a realistic, fully-optimized, and manufacturable design and eliminate costly hours of manual calculations, offline spreadsheets, and model remeshing.
Use HyperSizer to standardize your company's analysis with best in class verified and validated methods. Since the same analysis methods are used from preliminary to final design, there are no surprise negative margins of safety that would detrimentally affect your schedule or cause weight growth. With HyperSizer you can:
First, import a finite element model (FEM) directly into HyperSizer along with the corresponding FEA-computed loads. HyperSizer then analyzes using non-FEA failure methods to quantify safety factors and eliminate negative margins of safety for thousands of mechanical and thermal load sets. It then optimizes to quickly determine the lightest weight combination of material systems, cross-sectional dimensions, and ply layups for all panels and beams in the structure and automatically iterate with FEA for load convergence.
Import a Finite Element Model that is either a single plane of shell elements or that discretely models panel stiffeners (stringers). Four fundamental meshing techniques (shown below) are supported. Regardless of the modeling technique, HyperSizer performs the exact same analyses. However, the more discretely meshed a model is, the less opportunity for sizing optimization since variables become locked down by the mesh.
A primary benefit of HyperSizer is the ability to perform trade studies of different panel/beam concepts using HyperSizer’s equivalent stiffness approach. This is a key feature of HyperSizer that allows stiffened panels to be modeled with a single plane of shell elements (Technique 1). For any panel cross section, HyperSizer formulates the temperature dependent stiffness matrix which is then used to calculate the stresses and strains through the depth of the panel. With this technique the mesh is not required to align with the stiffeners so HyperSizer can evaluate any panel cross-sectional shape without remeshing the model.
HyperSizer extracts FEA-computed loads for all mechanical and thermal load sets and perform hundreds of industry standard failure analyses. On the HyperSizer Failure Tab, toggle a particular failure analysis on or off. If toggled on, HyperSizer will report a margin of safety.
Optimize the panels and beams to resolve all negative margins of safety for your selected toggled on set of analysis methods. In HyperSizer, enter a range of cross sectional dimensions and available materials to define the pool of candidates in the design space. Based on your defined range of variables, HyperSizer generates permutations of all possible candidates and analyzes them to find the lightest panel and beam dimensions that return positive margins for active failure modes to all load cases.
Design composite structures for strength, stability and manufacturability by following HyperSizer’s six-step composite optimization process. Use this process to find the optimum ply coverage and end-of-ply transition zones on the part surface, solve for ply count compatibility across the zones, and sequence the global ply ordering to reduce weight and minimize ply drops.
Iterate with FEA using HyperFEA™ to execute the solver and to control the iterative convergence. After HyperSizer has optimized the design of the vehicle, generalized thermoelastic stiffness terms are imported to the FEM for another iteration of computed internal load paths. HyperFEA provides this automatic iteration.
Integrate with company established analysis methods using plug-ins to integrate legacy codes into HyperSizer with programming languages such as Fortran and C++. Use COM to execute HyperSizer externally from applications such as Excel, Matlab, and integrated environments such as ModelCenter and Isight.
Generate stress reports that include the calculations for all HyperSizer-computed margins of safety, material properties, design-to loads, optimum design dimensions, etc. These comprehensive engineering reports are invaluable for FAA certification and assisting the stress engineers with detailed stress calculation data to support the hardware throughout its life cycle.
| Video Demonstrations |
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| Sizing a Structure Without FEA |
| Sizing a Vehicle FEM |
| HyperSizer Product Capabilities |
| HyperSizer Product Comparison |
| HyperSizer by Industry |
