March 11, 2008 – Concord, NH – Applied Math Modeling Inc. announced today that it has entered into an exclusive agreement with ANSYS, Inc. for the distribution, support and ongoing development of CoolSimTM, a product focused on modeling the thermal environment of data centers. CoolSim is a hosted product that utilizes advanced ANSYS® CFD solvers to compute the temperature, pressure and airflow within a data center. With the recent increased focus on data center cooling and efficiency, CoolSim has shown to be an effective tool for predicting the effect of changes in the data center.

Paul Bemis, CEO of Applied Math Modeling, said: “According to the EPA, companies can achieve up to 30 percent greater energy efficiency simply by improving the airflow within the data center. With data centers consuming an estimated $4.7 billion in 2006 according to the EPA’s most recent report to Congress, the opportunity for cost savings and improved efficiency is significant. With CoolSim, data center facility managers and planners can easily optimize rack and computer room air conditioning (CRAC) unit placement. They can also quickly identify potential thermal troublespots, which can lead to equipment failure and downtime. The market opportunity is significant, and we are pleased that ANSYS has chosen us as a strategic partner to help IT organizations solve these important challenges. We look forward to continuing the development and support of CoolSim.”

CoolSim uses an easy to use graphical interface enabling users to quickly create a model of their data center. The model is then automatically submitted to a hosted server for processing where results in the form of HTML output reports and 3D visual images are produced and sent to the user. This mechanism allows users to perform multiple “what-if” studies of their data centers to determine the optimal placement of equipment, or the effect of adding equipment to an existing data center.

“Up to this point, the facilities and IT planning functions have not had an ability to model the effect of additional servers or cooling equipment on the data center,” said Bemis. “CoolSim is an excellent planning tool, providing the ability to model the performance of new data center designs or changes to existing centers, therefore greatly reducing the risk of equipment failure due to heat.”

“We are very pleased to enter into this strategic relationship with Applied Math Modeling for the distribution, support and ongoing development of CoolSim,” said Chris Reid, vice president of marketing at ANSYS. ”This will enable the ANSYS CoolSim solution to reach a much broader audience by providing additional focus and domain expertise in the key target application of data center thermal modeling.”

About Applied Math Modeling
Applied Math Modeling Inc. develops and supports engineering simulation applications for specific target markets. As a strategic “value added” partner to ANSYS, Applied Math Modeling develops unique graphical user interfaces (GUI) for target markets that require specific modeling tasks, driven by the rich set of industry proven ANSYS simulation engines. These applications are then delivered to the market using a hosted “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model that is particularly well suited for periodic or occasional users. This unique approach reduces end user IT complexity and cost, Visit www.coolsimaudit.com for more information or info@koolsim.com.

About ANSYS, Inc.
ANSYS, Inc., founded in 1970, develops and globally markets engineering simulation software and technologies widely used by engineers and designers across a broad spectrum of industries. The Company focuses on the development of open and flexible solutions that enable users to analyze designs directly on the desktop, providing a common platform for fast, efficient and cost-conscious product development, from design concept to final-stage testing and validation. The Company and its global network of channel partners provide sales, support and training for customers. Headquartered in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., with more than 40 strategic sales locations throughout the world, ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries employ approximately 1,400 people and distribute ANSYS products through a network of channel partners in over 40 countries. Visit www.ansys.com for more information.

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One of the interesting uses of musculoskeletal simulation is to assess the forces and moments acting across a bone fracture. Knowledge of these loads is of crucial importance to designers of bone fixation devices as well as to the surgeons using them. John Rasmussen presented a paper on this idea co-authored with Australians Paul Taylor and Karl Stoffel at the recent Pre-ORS symposium on computer simulation in orthopaedics. The above picture shows an imagined position of a midshaft clavicle fracture. It is obvious that the bone is loaded by a multitude of muscle forces and the corresponding joint reactions at the bone’s end supports on the sternum and scapula respectively.

The idea behind the simulation is that a rigid joint is introduced in the model at the location of the fracture. The rigid joint does not change the mechanics, but it measures the forces and moments trans ferred across it. These forces and moments are what the bone fixation device and attachment strategy must subsequently be designed to carry until the bone has healed. Alternatively the model can be used to investigate whether the loads can be controlled in the healing period by temporary paralysis of selected muscles.

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SOUTHPOINTE, Pa., March 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ANSYS, Inc. (Nasdaq: ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, today announced it is a sponsor of the Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. This is the first permanent exhibit in the world to feature scientifically accurate, immersive environments that are composed of original fossil specimens. It is unique in that the dinosaurs are posed in active, engaging stances based on modern scientific conceptions, rather than the long-held notion of lumbering, tail-dragging, cold-blooded, lizard-like creatures.

ANSYS is sponsoring the dinosaur exhibit as part of its corporate citizenship program. The Company honors a commitment to make "community" an area of focus, a way for it to improve and enrich life in the locales where employees reside and work. ANSYS has a long history of making annual contributions toward community resources, and the museum dinosaur exhibit is the latest example. "We are pleased to be in a position to give back to our community," said Jim Cashman, president and CEO of ANSYS, Inc. "The museum is a source of pride for Pittsburgh, as it is the city's largest and most far- reaching cultural organization as well as a showcase and educational experience for the many people who come to visit." In celebration of the sponsor agreement, ANSYS hosted a "Night at the Museum" so its employees and their families could learn first-hand the significance of the exhibit.

"Dinosaurs in Their Time gives the museum's world-class fossil collection a home worthy of its immense scientific importance," said Dr. Zhe-Xi Luo, acting co-director and associate director of science and research at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. "It is through the generosity of companies like ANSYS that we are able to create something truly unique, educational and inspiring. Everyone at the museum is proud that this world-class collection of real dinosaur fossils is now presented to the public in the most accurate and most inspirational exhibit."

Of the 19 free-standing dinosaur skeletons on exhibit in Dinosaurs in Their Time, 15 of them consist almost entirely of real fossil bones. The museum is home to one of the world's best fossil collections, including the world's greatest collection of dinosaurs from the Jurassic Age.

About Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Carnegie Museum of Natural History is one of the six largest natural history museums in the nation, with more than 20 million specimens from all areas of natural history and anthropology. It is heralded as one of the best places in the world to see and learn about dinosaurs; the spectacular fossil collection is largely credited to Andrew Carnegie's fascination with dinosaurs near the turn of the 20th century, which inspired him to finance paleontological digs in several western states for more than two decades. The museum promotes stewardship of earth and its life; builds strategic collections to preserve evidence of that knowledge; and engages the public in the excitement of scientific discovery about the evolutionary, environmental and cultural processes that shape the diversity of our world and its inhabitants.

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Furniture Company Shortens Office Chair Design Process And Quickly Completes Project

When office furniture manufacturer Allsteel set itself the lofty task of creating the 'perfect 'office chair, they decided to call it number 19 because it has 18 major components, with the human as part number 19. Despite the name, the Allsteel #19 chair is made primarily of cast-recycled aluminum and with a retail price of around 1,300 euros, has achieved critical acclaim in the office furniture and design industries.

The chair design started from a clean slate and the computational analysis group's part of achieving Allsteel's mission was to ensure that the chair was both strong and reliable because, for the first time, the company was offering a lifetime warranty. In addition, the chair had to meet strict standards set by the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer's Association (BIFMA).

One of the key tools used by the team was finite element analysis (FEA).

Because of the demands of the project and the complexity of the chair, Allsteel ran more than 300 analysis cases on the chair using ANSYS Multiphysics FEA software. The effort helped minimize both dependence on prototyping and repeated testing of the Allsteel #19 chair.

According to Emad Tanbour, a senior project manager at HON Technology, Allsteel relies heavily on ANSYS stress analysis and use it extensively before investing in prototyping or testing. When questioned on about how the project might have progressed had it not been for ANSYS, Tanbour added: 'You just couldn't design some of these components by hand. Using ANSYS shortens the design process by at least three orders of magnitude.' The extensive analysis even played a role in marketing the Allsteel #19 chair.

For the product launch, a virtual reality show was created to demonstrate the chair and how it was designed, engineered and manufactured.

Animations from the ANSYS analysis - showing deflections - and CAD models were incorporated into this production.

The ANSYS animations were included in a DVD video made to promote the product as well, showing how the chair was thoroughly analyzed and tested. For further information on ANSYS please visit www.ansys.com

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Acquisition Broadens Capabilities as a Global Innovator of Simulation Software

SOUTHPOINTE, Pa. and PITTSBURGH, Mar 31, 2008 (PrimeNewswire via COMTEX News Network) -- ANSYS, Inc. (Nasdaq:ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, and Ansoft Corporation (Nasdaq:ANST), a global provider of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software, announced today that they signed a definitive agreement whereby ANSYS will acquire Ansoft for a purchase price of approximately $832 million in a mix of cash and ANSYS common stock. The strategic, complementary business combination of ANSYS and Ansoft will create the leading provider of 'best-in-class' simulation capabilities, with combined trailing 12-month revenues of $485 million. When completed, ANSYS currently anticipates that the transaction will be modestly accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share in its first full year of combined operations.

Under the terms of the definitive agreement, which was unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies, Ansoft stockholders will receive $16.25 in cash and 0.431882 shares of ANSYS common stock for each outstanding Ansoft share. Based on the 10-day trailing average closing price of ANSYS common stock, the implied value is $32.50 per Ansoft share. ANSYS will issue an aggregate of approximately 11.1 million shares of its common stock and pay an aggregate of approximately $416 million in cash in the transaction. ANSYS intends to fund the cash portion of the transaction with approximately $70 million of cash on-hand from the combined organization and approximately $346 million from the proceeds of a $450 million unsecured senior term loan credit facility. ANSYS' current lender, Bank of America, N.A., has committed to fully underwriting the credit facility and Banc of America Securities LLC has agreed to act as lead arranger. The pricing of the senior credit facility is tier-based with limited market flexibility on yields and structure to facilitate its syndication. The transaction, currently anticipated to close in the second calendar quarter of 2008, is subject to customary closing conditions, regulatory approvals and approval by the Ansoft stockholders. In connection with the execution of the definitive agreement, certain Ansoft stockholders, who collectively beneficially own approximately 16% of Ansoft, entered into voting agreements agreeing to vote for the proposed transaction. Upon the closing of the transaction, Ansoft stockholders will own approximately 12% of the combined company on a pro forma basis. After the closing, Ansoft will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of ANSYS and Ansoft common stock will cease trading on NASDAQ.

Ansoft is a leading developer of high-performance EDA software. The software is based on more than 25 years of research and development by world-renowned experts in electromagnetics, circuit and system simulation. Engineers use Ansoft products to simulate high-performance electronics designs found in mobile communication and Internet devices, broadband networking components and systems, integrated circuits, printed circuit boards and electromechanical systems. The company's products are used by blue chip companies as well as small- and medium-sized enterprises around the world.

The acquisition of Ansoft is ANSYS' first foray into the broader EDA software industry and will enhance the breadth, functionality, usability and interoperability of the combined ANSYS portfolio of engineering simulation solutions. The combination is expected to increase operational efficiency and lower design and engineering costs for customers, and accelerate development and delivery of new and innovative products to the marketplace. The complementary combination of Ansoft's and ANSYS' software products and services is expected to give ANSYS one of the most complete, independent engineering simulation software offerings in the industry, reaffirming and strengthening ANSYS' commitment to open interface and flexible simulation solutions that are primarily driven by customer demand, flexibility and choice. With over 40 direct sales offices and 21 development centers on three continents, the combined company will employ approximately 1,700 people.

"We are very excited about the state-of-the-art technologies that Ansoft adds to ANSYS' simulation capabilities," said James E. Cashman III, President and Chief Executive Officer of ANSYS. "Both companies have a strong commitment to their customers and employees, and share a passion for the development of innovative products and services and a history of world-class execution. This combination will further strengthen these values and will allow us to better serve our customers by accelerating the delivery of comprehensive, customer-driven engineering simulation solutions and by enabling us to provide high quality support throughout the world. We see this as an opportunity to add highly complementary physics that address the convergence of mechanical and electrical engineering product design and development. We are also excited about bringing two great Pittsburgh-based companies together to create an exciting opportunity for aspiring engineers, computer scientists and professionals to join us in our mission to democratize the use of simulation across the globe.

"The simulation technologies that Ansoft adds complement and broaden the existing ANSYS portfolio of simulation solutions, enabling the combined company to deliver the integration, efficiency, functionality and interoperability required by customers across a broad range of industries and applications. With trailing 12-month revenues ending January 31, 2008 of $98 million, Ansoft brings a combination of new software revenue growth and strong operating margins. Ansoft's solid revenue and customer base, combined with its profitability, should enable the transaction to be modestly accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share in our first full year of combined operations and accretive beyond that," stated Cashman.

"This merger brings together two great companies with a shared vision and strong engineering focus," said Dr. Zoltan J. Cendes, the founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer of Ansoft. "The combination of our R&D teams, complementary technological strengths and our commitment to quality will enhance our ability to deliver comprehensive, innovative, world-class simulation software technologies that customers demand." In conjunction with this transaction, Dr. Cendes will join ANSYS' Board of Directors following the closing of the transaction.

"The combination of Ansoft's extensive portfolio of electromagnetics, circuit and systems simulation solutions with ANSYS' existing simulation capabilities creates a 'best of breed' company that will continue to lead the evolution and innovation of engineering simulation by enabling customers to improve their product development processes, eliminate physical prototypes, reduce time-to-market for new products and improve product innovation and performance," said Nicholas Csendes, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ansoft.

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>Mid-sized companies are tapping high-powered HPC platforms to do more sophisticated simulation studies

The barriers to entry for high performance computing (HPC) continue to fall, portending big benefits for engineers looking to do virtual reality studies on design concepts or to solve problems around computational fluid dynamics or structural mechanics prior to building physical prototypes.

The price/performance curve for powerful HPC hardware is accelerating at a rapid pace, opening up technology that was once accessible only to wealthy research and academic enclaves to mainstream manufacturers building everything from automotive components to high-end golf clubs. As little as five years ago, for example, a 100 million-degree-of-freedom structural analysis problem might require a supercomputer with a price tag of anywhere from $300,000 to several millions — hardly a bargain for most businesses. In contrast, that same simulation can run just as efficiently, if not more so, today on widely available 64-bit desktop or workgroup cluster offerings from Hewlett-Packard Co. or Silicon Graphics Inc. costing as little as $25,000.

Simultaneously, an increasing number of partnerships around packaging HPC solutions for such specific applications as computer-aided engineering (CAE) is also helping to push the technology within the reach of mid-size companies. On the heels of Microsoft Corp.’s release of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 in November 2006 and its predecessor, Windows HPC Server 2008, announced last November and due out mid-year, hardware vendors such as HP and modeling and simulation application providers like ANSYS and Presagis have partnered to roll out pre-packaged solutions that bundle up HPC hardware, operating systems and administrative and management tools along with specific CAE applications. The goal is being able to deliver systems that come as close to running out of the box like a traditional PC without requiring specialized programming and hard-to-come-by HPC administrative talent.

The confluence of both trends is creating a boom in the HPC market. According to market researcher International Data Corp., HPC server revenue jumped to $3 billion in the third quarter of 2007, an 18 percent jump over the same quarter last year and an 8.8 percent spike quarter-over-quarter. In 2006, HPC systems accounted for 26 percent of all processors sold in the server market, more than doubling the 2003 HPC share of around 12 percent, IDC officials say. As HPC systems become more affordable for smaller companies and business units and with the dramatic cost increases associated with live experiments compared to computer modeling and simulation, IDC expects HPC platforms to create a “sea change” in scientific and engineering research and development, a shift that will create a $15-plus billion market by 2011.

With all this high-end computing power at their fingertips and with many of the administrative and configuration challenges starting to be addressed, mainstream manufacturers are more apt to make HPC-driven simulation an integral part of the early design process. For CAE applications like finite element analysis (FEA) or computational fluid dynamics (CFD), in particular, the raw horsepower of an HPC environment delivers benefits on a number of fronts. On one hand, engineers are assured of significantly faster turnaround times on complex simulations, reducing tasks that previously might have taken weeks or even months on specialized systems to days, sometimes even hours. In addition, the extra processing muscle of HPC platforms means engineers can pursue much more detailed simulations and spend less time perfecting their models prior to running a simulation. Finally, because turnaround times are much less, engineers have more leeway and bandwidth to conduct simulation studies on multiple design points instead of conserving simulation horsepower and development time for one portion of the design puzzle.

“The expansion of computing capacity takes simulation from being a forensic study to figure out why you designed a function the way you did to becoming a true tool that influences the early design stage,” says Barbara Hutchings, who oversees strategic partnerships for ANSYS.

Cost-Effective Computing Horsepower

Indeed, HPC, especially spread more broadly within an organization, is a game changer for complex kinds of CAE simulations, according to Bruce Engelmann, chief technology officer for SIMULIA, the Dassault Systèmes brand that markets the Abaqus software. Additional, cost-effective computing horsepower enables complex kinds of modeling like non-linear analysis, which is oftentimes avoided because of the demands it makes on the system and the development schedule. “Non-linear simulation takes more computational work — it’s not as easy to solve,” Engelmann says. “You might need six hours to do a linear job, but the non-linear version might require days. When you’re running the non-linear job on a cluster computer, you bring it back into that five to six hour window.”

Cheaper cluster HPC hardware can also save engineers time since they don’t need to be as diligent about putting up-front work in to create a model that makes efficient use of compute time. “A big part of the simulation effort is building the model in the first place,” Engelmann says. “HPC doesn’t help optimize the model, but you can run a less optimized model from a computing efficiency point of view without having to do a lot of setup.”

Dana Corp., a supplier of axles and drive shafts to the automotive industry, can certainly attest to that. The company has been using SMP-based (Symmetric Multiprocessing) HPC systems for years and recently started working with HP blade servers and Linux clusters to up performance for its FEA and CFD simulations using Dassault’s Abaqus 6.7 software, which supports distributed computing. The new setup has drastically improved turnaround time by four or five times, explains Frank Popielas, Dana’s manager advanced engineering for its Sealing Products Div. “A 3-D power train simulation which took 17 hours before can now be done in three to four hours or less,” Popielas says. “A more detailed model that might have taken a couple of weeks is now done in two to three days.”

The real benefit behind the time savings is that Popielas’ group is more apt to include simulation as part of the design process, which is a must for getting a product design right the first time before going to prototype. “If you’re looking at weeks of simulation time and the time line calls for a couple of weeks to make a prototype, you’re likely to do it without simulation,” he says. “But if your goal is to get a product ‘first time right,’ you have to go through simulation.”

Along with SIMULIA, other simulation software vendors like ANSYS have spent years modifying their applications for a parallel architecture so they’re optimized to take advantage of distributed or cluster computing. To do so, the application splits the work load in pieces and manages the processing across an array of cores and processors. While in theory, the task sounds basic, it’s actually a tremendous amount of work. To help developers make the transition more readily, Microsoft, in November, announced its Parallel Computing Initiative, a program charged with creating a common set of development tools, programming models and libraries that can be used to build applications that span multicore desktops and clusters.

Presagis, which develops commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) modeling, simulation and embedded display graphics software for the aerospace and defense industry, says Microsoft’s efforts are helping to spread its Terra Vista tools into the hands of a wider HPC audience. Presagis has entered into a three-way alliance with Microsoft and HP to deliver a bundle offering around Terre Vista that will provide simulation capabilities as an out-of-the-box solution. ANSYS also has a partnership with Microsoft to performance-tune its ANSYS 11 and Fluent 6.3 applications with Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.

Windows HPC Server 2008, the successor to Microsoft’s server platform, is based on the Windows 2008 operating system and has features designed to address productivity, manageability and scalability issues. Specifically, the upgrade delivers high-speed networking capabilities, new scalable cluster management tools, advanced failover functionality, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) job scheduler and support for partners’ clustered file systems.

HP has a similar vision of cutting through the complexity to entice non-traditional audiences to adopt HPC platforms. Last November, HP announced the HP Cluster Platform Workgroup System based on its BladeSystem c3000 unit, which offers midsize businesses almost a teraflop per second of computing power while taking up only 2 sq ft of floor space. The system is even more mainstream-friendly thanks to such features as power supplies that plug into standard wall outlets, integrated network cables and management tools. Accompanying this system are Solution Blocks, which build integrated applications right onto the platform; ANSYS Fluent CFD configured on the HP Workgroup System with Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 is one of the first bundled packages released on the HP platform.

“Most of the roadblocks to HPC have been around complexity,” says Ed Turkel, manager of product and technology marketing for HP’s High Performance Computing Div. “Being able to offer more or less a complete solution eliminates a lot of those major concerns.”

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8th Annual Conference: Innovation in Composites

Thursday 24th April 2008 | The Holiday Inn, Chapel Lane, Great Barr, Birmingham, B43 7BG, UK

Programme | Themes & Speakers (9:30 - 18:00)

Introduction | David Beardsworth, CompositesUK

Thermoplastic Composites | Iain Montgomery & John Darlington, Sabic Innovative Plastics; Nikos Pantelelis, NTUA Athens; George Maistros, Inasco; Ken Forsdyke, Fortech

Processing | Duncan Kerr, Curon Ltd; Russell J Caspe, Victoria L. Coenen, Alan Nesbitt, Arthur Wilkinson, North West Composites Centre; Carwyn Webb, GTW Developments Ltd; Prasad Polturi, Paul Hogg, North West Composites Centre

Innovative Composite Structures | Arielle Blonder, Gurit UK; Richard Filippi, Nidaplast Honeycombs; David Kendall, Optima Projects; Matthew Harte, BioCote Limited

Damage and Novel Repair Techniques | B. Henderson, B. Gibbs, Paul Hogg, North West Composites Centre; Paul Anstice, PERA

Skills & Training | Chris Little, Composites Training Consortium Ltd

Main programme is followed by...

18:00 | Annual General Meeting (CompositesUK members only)
19:30 for 20:00 | Conference Dinner

Exhibition

A table top exhibition and poster display will be held along side this event, where various projects and products of interest to our industry will be shown. Please take time to support our exhibitors and poster presenters.

Registrations

To register for this event please contact us.
CompositesUK, BMF, North West Composites Centre members and students receive a discount on the conference fee.

Date Apr 14 2008 - Apr 15 2008
Location DCMT
Shrivenham

United Kingdom

This event, within the series of Symposia at Shrivenham, will follow a well proven format of presentations and discussions in a relaxed.
atmosphere within secure surroundings with lunches, refreshments, reception and a buffet supper included. Open discussion is encouraged and programme time is planned accordingly to include a workshop session and short course on prognostics. It will provide a unique opportunity to network and to exchange ideas and experience with other experts to generate a searching debate into the future direction of improving military equipment availability.

nCode Director, Clive Mott will present "The develoment and deployment of HUMS systems" on the second day.

Click here for further information.

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Proud Bird of the Deep

Looking for adventure? How about a frolic in your own personal submarine hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean?

If you’ve got the cash — by some reports about a million dollars — Hawkes Ocean Technologies (HOT) can put you in the driver’s seat. The San Francisco area company, which has designed and built the majority of the world’s manned submersibles since the 1970s, is getting ready to debut its most advanced vessel yet, the Super Falcon, in the Spring of 2008.

Blending a sleek winged design with advanced mechatronics’ concepts, the craft promises to meet company founder Graham Hawkes’ goal of pushing the envelope in “deep water flight.”

Tracing the Pedigree

The Super Falcon follows a 30-year history of designing and building subs. Originally, Hawkes focused on Atmospheric Diving Systems, such as the Wasp and Mantis, for the offshore oil and gas industry. Then he moved to conventional submersibles he called Deep Rovers. In the late 1980s, Hawkes and his team shifted to winged designs, which embodied a new generation of lightweight micro-submersibles that require no ballast and operate on the same principles as flight through air.

“Super Falcon is the third generation vehicle in our line of Deep Flight winged submersibles,” says Hawkes. “The wings came about originally because of our interest in building a full ocean-depth vehicle as an alternative to a massively heavy conventional submersible. When we launched our first winged sub, Deep Flight I, and saw the public interest in underwater flight, we realized we wanted to pursue underwater flight for its own sake, regardless of depth.”

As Hawkes tells it, Super Falcon is “leaps ahead” of the company’s prototype flier, Deep Flight Aviator. “When you are trying to push the frontiers of design, you either focus on the concept; keeping the technology conventional, which is what we did with Deep Flight Aviator, or you can push the technology,” Hawkes says.

Geometry Shapes Performance

The Super Falcon will weigh about 4,200 lb and is designed as a two-person performance submersible. Like HOT’s previous submersibles, it is always positively buoyant and has no variable ballast system. Instead, the craft relies on hydrodynamic forces on its wings to fly beneath the waves. This provides an inherent safety feature, says Mechanical Engineer Adam Wright. If the sub were to ever lose power or get into trouble, it would float back to the surface.

Only the pilot and co-pilot and a small amount of life support and control hardware are encapsulated in the main pressure hull. All other components, such as thrusters, actuators and batteries, are either designed to operate under pressure or are housed independently. This minimizes the volume of the pressure hull, which in turn reduces the total surface area subject to hydrostatic pressure and keeps weight down.

For increased performance, the team designed the shape of the pressure hull to minimize frontal area, while still maintaining passenger comfort. As such, the geometry of the pressure hull is inefficient at withstanding ocean pressure compared to conventional geometrical shapes such as spheres or cylinders. To compensate, the pressure hull will be constructed of very strong carbon fiber/fiberglass composites and will maintain a safety factor of three with an operational depth of 400 to 1,500 ft.

For propulsion, the sub relies on a large diameter dc brushed motor powered by pressure-compensated lithium polymer batteries. A single electric thruster can generate up to 500 lb of thrust. The sub will cruise at an estimated maximum horizontal velocity of 7 knots, with a much greater vertical ascent velocity. An independent ball screw linear actuator will control each axis of flight control (pitch, roll and yaw).

“The sub will fly by wire, in that the flight controls are driven by electrical signals instead of mechanically, which would have required reciprocating seals in the pressure hull,” says Wright.

Because the sub is designed purely to explore underwater flight, it will not have a “hover” mode and will always need to maintain some speed to stay submerged. As a result, it will not carry any manipulator, although future research-based submersibles will have manipulators and be capable of hovering.

Safety in the Deep

In designing the sub’s electrical and control systems, the major concerns were safety, reliability, flexibility and accessibility, according to lead Electronics Engineer David Jeffrey. “Because we’re working around seawater and because there will be crew and divers in the water during submarine operations, it is dangerous to have high voltages,” he says. “Our submarine runs on a 50.4V battery power system, heavily monitored during maintenance and operation. This is a good compromise between excessive voltages and having to handle very high currents.”

Jeffrey adds, the best design electronics approach is to “minimize the things that experience tells us tend to go wrong.” In submarines, this mainly involves areas where electronics and seawater can come together, such as underwater connectors and sealed one-atmosphere housings, particularly if they have a moving seal. Static seals perform far better, says Jeffrey, as do brushless dc motors, which can run in an oil-filled housing at ambient pressure.

Since the team wanted to limit the number of wires passed between the exterior and interior of the sub, the engineers realized a networked control system, based on standard modules, would work best. That solution also addresses accessibility issues. The sub has a “diagnostic port,” which permits a PC to communicate with all of the nodes. Everything sub pilots might want to adjust is stored in EEPROM in the nodes and can be read and changed as needed. Using a bootload program, one can even upload a whole new suite of software to the nodes.

Another huge advantage of a network, according to Jeffrey, is that it can be extended. Adding a node does not require adding wires. This is a great improvement over the old, hard-wired systems, which used preset potentiometers for all adjustments and separate wires for every function.

Essential Design Tools

Also very valuable, adds Wright, were ANSYS Mechanical (FEA stress analysis simulation software) and ANSYS CFX (computational fluid dynamics software). “Because the shape of the pressure hull is so unconventional and organic, one cannot easily calculate its internal stresses or interaction with other components,” he says. “But with ANSYS Mechanical, we can iterate different designs and get visual results within minutes.”

Also very valuable, adds Wright, were ANSYS Mechanical (FEA stress analysis simulation software) and ANSYS CFX (computational fluid dynamics software). “Because the shape of the pressure hull is so unconventional and organic, one cannot easily calculate its internal stresses or interaction with other components,” he says. “But with ANSYS Mechanical, we can iterate different designs and get visual results within minutes.”

For the electronics design, Jeffrey did most of his general drawing with Zoner Draw 5, a low-cost package he has used for many years. He also does PCB design with BoardMaker3 and for AVR microcontroller software, he uses Atmel’s AVR Studio and CodeVisionAVR compiler. AVR Studio supports two different methods of de-bugging. “You can run your code in an emulator on a PC or you can use a JTAG interface to permit debugging in the target hardware,” says Jeffrey.

The team developed most of its PC software for the sub using Just BASIC and Visual Basic. They also turned to Just BASIC to develop network diagnostic and monitoring programs. Terminal v1.9b by Bray was an important serial port diagnostic tool. Among other useful tools cited by Jeffrey: PSPad for program editing, WizFlow for generating flow charts, MultiSim for simulating board hardware performance and MathCAD for modeling stepper motor controls.

In addition, Electronics Engineer Charles Chiau relied on Autodesk Maya 8.5 for underwater lighting simulations. By importing the model from Autodesk Inventor and placing a simple camera in the cockpit simulating the pilot’s perspectives, engineers were able to create artificial underwater environments and test various configurations of the lights on the Super Falcon. “This software was a great tool for giving us a feel for what the sub’s pilots would see,” says Chiau.

Hawkes points out that this rich lineup of computer tools enabled HOT to reduce the Super Falcon design team to the bare minimum, four or five engineers. “Once you get down to that number, the communications issues that plague bigger teams just don’t exist,” he says.

Chiau also cites the importance of weekly brainstorming sessions involving a team from a variety of engineering backgrounds. “It is extremely important that we collaborate because our subs are a fusion of electrical and mechanical components,” he says.

Chasing the Market

Tom Perkins, founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, will be the first owner of a Super Falcon. The sub will be operated from his sailing yacht, The Maltese Falcon. “Tom is truly pioneering underwater flight with us,” says Hawkes.

And the cost? “If you have to ask how much, then you cannot afford them!” adds Hawkes. “But we hope to eventually get our costs down to the range of the light aviation industry. We’re always looking at ways to reduce costs, including licensing the technology to a qualified manufacturer.”

The HOT team is already working on what Hawkes describes as an “extreme submersible with extraordinary performance capability beyond anything that exists.” This project may be announced before the end of 2008.

As Hawkes explains it, about two thirds of our planet is covered by water, yet there are only five deep submersibles in the entire world. To give customers more choice, Hawkers has started a company called Ocean Access International (OAI) and is raising venture capital money to make the firm’s Deep Flight submersibles widely available for science, governments and industry.

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Korean Supercomputing Center to Provide Increased High-Performance Computing Resources to Korean Industry and Academia

SOUTHPOINTE, Pa., Feb. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ANSYS, Inc. (Nasdaq: ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, today announced that the Korean Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), one of the world's largest supercomputing centers, has selected software from ANSYS to strengthen its standing as an international engineering simulation and science technology information center. As a result, KISTI will be able to provide increased computing resources to academia and industry in Korea.

KISTI has driven its Supercomputing Project for more than a year to develop a high-quality computing environment for customers in need of practical high-performance and large-scale computer-aided engineering (CAE) and science simulations. As part of the overall procurement, KISTI selected software from ANSYS for its functionality and superb parallel performance. Product support will be provided by Advanced Technology Engineering Service Co., Ltd. (ATES), which has more than 15 years experience supporting software from ANSYS in Korea.

"This is the largest supercomputing project ever completed in Korea. The overall cost of the computer and software is approximately 60 million U.S. dollars. We have already finished the introduction of this high-performance computing system, and we will start supporting customers' ANSYS simulations at the middle of this month," said Sik Lee, Ph.D., a leader at the KISTI Supercomputing Applications Team. "As part of the software procurement, we evaluated many commercial CAE codes, but the stability of products from ANSYS and the customer care provided by ATES gave us much confidence."

KISTI is planning to introduce a second supercomputing system by March 2009. "Its scale will be 280 teraflops," said B.T. Yang, Ph.D., a president at KISTI. "If this project is completed as planned, we expect that our supercomputing center will be ranked in the top 10 of 'Top 500 Supercomputer Sites,' which is the most well-known project that records the size of supercomputing sites worldwide."

"The KISTI Supercomputing Project reaffirms the ANSYS commitment to high- performance computing and the significant value it provides to users of engineering simulation at all levels. Our software has performance scalability specifically engineered into its design, such that our customers see tremendous performance gains with a corresponding increase in computing power," said Joe Fairbanks, vice president for global sales and support at ANSYS, Inc. "Korean organizations have long realized the benefits that can come from simulation-driven design, research and development, and their usage of simulation software from ANSYS continues to grow rapidly. ATES and ANSYS have worked closely with KISTI to provide this world-class organization with our software, which will be used by both Korean academia and industry for large-scale simulations. The project will be especially valuable to organizations with limited computational resources, which will be able to discover the benefits of performing large-scale CAE simulations with software from ANSYS."

"We intend to provide KISTI with generous high-quality support to ensure that they get the very best out of the software from ANSYS and to further increase their usage of this and other ANSYS software solutions," said H.H. Ahn, general sales manager at ATES.

About Korean Institute of Science & Technology Information

KISTI, organized in 1962, is a government supported research institute dedicated to the promotion of national competitiveness through the establishment of a science and technology information (STI) R&D infrastructure. As a national core institute for STI infrastructure, KISTI collects, analyzes, and provides scientific, technological and industrial information. In addition, the organization builds and operates R&D supporting infrastructures, such as supercomputing and research networks. For more information, visit http://www.kisti.re.kr/english/.

About Advanced Technology Engineering Service Co., Ltd.

ATES, located in Seoul, Korea, has distributed and supported FLUENT(R) solutions since 1990. The company was authorized as a CFD solution channel partner with ANSYS, Inc. in May 2006. ATES distributes the commercial CFD codes FLUENT, ANSYS(R) CFX(R), ANSYS(R) ICEM CFD(TM) and all other CFD products from ANSYS. In addition, the company performs engineering services and project consulting. In 2007, ATES opened its regional offices in Dae-jeon and Busan to provide technical support to customers throughout Korea.

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For quick ventilation analysis, computational fluid dynamics is hard to beat. Dan Jestico, senior environmental engineer at consulting engineer Hilson Moran, describes the benefits of airflow modelling with Fluent 6.3

Mixed-mode ventilation is increasingly being adopted to help reduce the carbon footprint of new buildings. In exploiting natural ventilation, the challenge is how to design a window opening system that provides a good supply of air across a floorplate without causing uncomfortable draughts near openings.

Building mock-ups and wind tunnel models can be time-consuming and expensive, but the risks of getting the design wrong are high. Using the type and level of technology normally reserved for Formula One racing cars, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has the potential to allow numerous design modifications to be tested before construction begins.

CFD generates a 3D computer model of the geometry and surroundings of a design as a virtual airflow model. The effects of airflow and heat transfer can then be analysed in detail, allowing design iterations to be tested and improved. The process can also be used in the built environment for pedestrian comfort, fire and smoke modelling, solar radiation and wind engineering.

Hilson Moran has been using the latest release of Fluent, the CFD package from Ansys. We have been working with KPF Associates on its design for the Pinnacle — at 288m, set to be the City of London’s tallest building — to introduce natural ventilation to the upper floors of this geometrically complex design while taking advantage of the prevailing winds.

Successive releases of the software have improved functionality, which has helped to speed up the process and increased modelling accuracy.

The previous release of the software implemented a “solver” which accelerated processing times significantly. Simulations that once had to run overnight or over a weekend can now be completed in hours. The latest release allowed the software to address all the 32Gb of Ram installed on my Windows 64-bit workstation, so I could simulate models as complex as those I worked on for the Honda Formula One team.

Fluent and its bundled geometry preparation software merge well with 3D modelling packages such as Rhino and SolidWorks, where surface geometry is exported as Acis or Sat files. At Hilson Moran, however, we can also export from Rhino using STL geometry to a third-party package called Harpoon. This automates the geometry preparation process, enabling a faster turnaround than is possible with the associated Fluent packages for a model as complex as that for the Pinnacle.

Hilson Moran first used this approach on the project to model the effect of facade design on the airflow across the floorplate. To reduce energy consumption, the Pinnacle has been designed with an externally ventilated facade which will limit solar gain into the offices while maximising natural light. The inner skin of the facade can be opened for mixed-mode ventilation while the outer skin consists of overlapping panels in a “snakeskin” arrangement, with some very narrow gaps between structural elements.

To obtain sufficient resolution of the flow between these gaps, we created our largest CFD model to date. The floorplate has been modelled at three heights on the building to take account of lower air speeds at lower building heights, known as the atmospheric boundary layer. The geometry has been assessed for wind from the South-west and North-east, these being the prevailing ones in London.

Initial results showed that the arrangement of the inner opening windows gave rise to a jet of air running around the perimeter of the floorplate, together with a potential region of slow-moving flow near one of the cores. Fluent showed that the high-velocity flows were created by jets of air from adjacent opening windows being superimposed.

This was decided in a meeting one afternoon. By making the geometry changes in Rhino and using Harpoon for the geometry preparation, the model was ready for simulation by close of business the next day.

The simulation ran overnight and by the following morning, it was clear that changing the geometry had significantly improved the airflow pattern across the floorplate.

The huge benefit of faster turnaround times for CFD analyses is that the consulting engineer can contribute early on in the design process. It is used at concept stage on many projects to assess the potential for mixed-mode ventilation and other matters.

It is not a package that can just be picked up by anyone, though. Once an engineer has gained solid experience in Fluent, its use becomes second nature, but a beginner needs specialist training to get up and running. Users of CFD analysis require an engineering background, with some understanding of the nuances of aerodynamic mathematics, which means you need specialist staff or an external M&E consultant offering specialist expertise.

However, using CFD at an early stage in a project’s development could bring considerable time and cost savings.

CFD studies of natural ventilation for KPF’s Pinnacle Tower, City of London

Before: initial window opening design Image showing contours of velocity across the floorplate of the 41st floor for a south-west wind. Note the red area of high velocity around the perimeter and the dark blue patches near the north core.

After: modified window opening strategy The 41st floor is again subjected to a south-west wind, but air now moves much more evenly across the floorplate, giving improved ventilation and lowering the potential for draughts.