Super Elements – Accelerate Analysis In The Design Process

Product = GENESIS

Introduction to Superelements:

Although computational power and resources are ever-increasing, finite element models continue to increase in complexity and analysis requires more computational time. Also, finite element analysis is performed numerous times during the design process. Quite often the setup is modified and re-analyzed several times. Superelements offer an efficient solution to this challenge, both to perform analysis of large models and allowing re-analysis in the design process within the limited time frame. Also, superelements allows users to transfer models across teams in different organizations while ensuring to keep design details hidden.

To perform a superelement analysis in GENESIS®, a large model is divided into smaller pieces (called super elements). A superelement is reduced to its boundary (or interface) degrees of freedom. Then, a model with only the collection of all boundary degrees of freedom of all superelements along with all degrees of freedom of non-reduced pieces (the residual structure) can be assembled and solved.

That’s all for the week. In the upcoming weeks, the topic will be continued, with an example of a Normal Mode Analysis performed for a Body-In-White (BIW) Model of an Automobile without/with using super elements.