Enhancements have been implemented to improve the performance of analysis solvers, and to provide you with better solutions.
The Midplane and Dual-domain flow solvers now calculate similar polymer matrix properties for fiber-filled materials to those calculated by the 3D flow solver, as a result of a change to the polymer matrix mechanical property decomposition. The polymer matrix mechanical properties reported in the material data are also correspondingly changed. This change has only minimal impact on the warp predictions of deflected part shape.
The accuracy of micromechanics models, which are applied to calculate the composite properties, has been improved. The improvements have some small impact on the predictions of composite properties and the subsequent warp predictions of deflected part shape, for all composite materials filled with fibers or disk-like fillers.
The accuracy of 3D Warp predictions is improved for semi-crystalline polymer materials by an improved consideration of the crystallization effects at solidification. This improvement does not require any additional material data and is applied for all semi-crystalline polymers. This effect will increase the magnitude of volumetric shrinkage and 3D Warp deflections. It will also influence cavity pressure decay predictions. The same crystallization consideration has already been included in the Midplane and Dual-Domain solvers for many years. This improvement to the 3D solvers reduces the difference in deflection prediction seen between different mesh types.
The sink-marks prediction for 3D models has been improved. It generally predicts the location of the sink marks more accurately compared to previous releases. It can now predict sink-marks even in general 3D geometry, including those areas which do not have a traditional rib structure.
An “Automatic” option is added for pack/holding control. When this option is chosen, the solver will automatically determine the magnitude and duration of the packing pressure profile, with the objective of achieving a reasonably low level of shrinkage while remaining within process and machine limits. A constant pressure is used during packing. The automatic packing control is intended as a typical setting for users who are not yet sure of the actual process conditions to be used during molding. It is not expected to be the optimized process setting.
This is implemented for thermoplastic material processes (such as thermoplastics injection molding) for mid-plane, dual-domain and 3D meshes.
The calculation of barrel effect in the Midplane and Dual-domain (2.5D) flow solvers has been enhanced to achieve better consistency for filled volume predictions between 2.5D and 3D flow solvers.
The numerical precision of the standard Cool (Boundary Element Method) solver has been enhanced. This will improve the numerical convergence of mold temperature results in areas where the cooling circuits are very close to the part surface or mold surface. This improved precision can for some study files cause an increase in the number of iterations required to achieve a converged solution. For such models, computation time will be increased.
3D analysis now predicts more complete and continuous weld surfaces on meshes with a good quality. Extreme mesh refinement or small time-step is not required for the prediction of continuous weld surfaces, but they may help eliminate false predictions in some cases. When the option of “Weld surface strength analysis” is enabled, the computational time and memory usage during the flow analysis and the size of the interface file (.ws3) for structural analysis may increase significantly.
Improvements have been made in the powder/fiber migration solver to increase the accuracy of predictions and reduce the occurrence of spurious results.
An additional warning message has been added to indicate when the concentration calculation has diverged at a particular time-step. In such time-steps, the update of concentration values is supressed, and the previous values are carried forward unchanged. If this divergence warning is seen for many time-steps, it indicates that the prediction of concentration may have a large error. The error would be minor if the divergence warning is seen for a few time-steps.
This enhancement applies to Fill or Flow analyses with "Absolute ram speed profile" control and contains 2 aspects:
Another benefit of this enhancement is that valve gate control by ram position can now be extended into packing phase.
For the Midplane and Dual-domain (2.5D) flow solvers, the "Profiled result" output (Advanced options > Solver parameters > Intermediate output) is now turned on by default with the default "Number of profiled results" set to 20. This change will allow users to compare detailed results (e.g. temperature) from 2.5D analysis with corresponding results from 3D analysis.