LUSAS

Last updated
LUSAS
Developer(s) LUSAS
Stable release
19.0-2 / July 2020
Operating system Windows
Type Finite Element Analysis Simulation
License Proprietary
Website www.lusas.com

LUSAS is a UK-based developer and supplier of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) application software products that bear the same name.

Contents

History

LUSAS has its origins back in 1970 when a group of research workers at the University of London (now incorporated into Imperial College London) began work on the London University Stress Analysis System, "LUSAS". This team was led by Dr. Paul Lyons, who, in 1982, set up an independent company, Finite Element Analysis Ltd., to further develop, and subsequently market the software as a general purpose structural analysis system. [1] In 1997, following the introduction of a range of specialist application software packages, the company, for awareness reasons, then started to trade under the LUSAS name.

Software

LUSAS software consists of a Windows-based Modeller, used for model building and viewing of results, and a Solver for carrying out an analysis. Four commercial application products cater for the following industries:

For Universities, an Academic version which permits the running of any commercial LUSAS software product can be used for teaching and research use.

Example Applications

Civil and structural engineering uses [2] include Anthony Gormley's Quantum Cloud, built alongside the Millennium Dome, (now the O2 Arena), as part of UK's Millennium Commission sponsored celebrations for the year 2000; Spinnaker Tower, the tallest publicly accessible provincial structure in the UK; and Gwangmyeong Velodrome, the largest domed structure built, so far, in South Korea.

Bridges designed with the aid of LUSAS [3] include the Lune Millennium Bridge, and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge both also built, coincidentally, as part of the UK's year 2000 celebrations, and the Vasco da Gama cable stayed bridge and associated viaduct structures in Portugal.

General mechanical engineering uses [4] are extremely varied and include thermal analysis of marine loading arms - used to transfer Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) from shore to ship and vice versa at a temperature of -163 degrees Celsius, nonlinear analysis of nylon polyamide cable ties used to bundle cables together, and contact analysis of titanium and ceramic hip joint components as used in artificial hip replacement

Composites engineering applications [5] involve the analysis of composite material layups for potential delamination, material damage and fatigue modelling of many types of components in the automotive, aviation, and marine industries.

Related Research Articles

Mechanical engineering Engineering discipline and economic branch

Mechanical engineering is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science to design, analyze, manufacture, and maintain mechanical systems. It is one of the oldest and broadest of the engineering branches.

Structural engineering sub-discipline of civil engineering dealing with the creation of man made structures

Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and muscles' that create the form and shape of man-made structures. Structural engineers need to understand and calculate the stability, strength and rigidity and earthquake of built structures for buildings and nonbuilding structures. The structural designs are integrated with those of other designers such as architects and building services engineer and often supervise the construction of projects by contractors on site. They can also be involved in the design of machinery, medical equipment, and vehicles where structural integrity affects functioning and safety. See glossary of structural engineering.

Computer-aided engineering broad usage of computer software to aid in engineering analysis tasks

Computer-aided engineering (CAE) is the broad usage of computer software to aid in engineering analysis tasks. It includes finite element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), multibody dynamics (MBD), durability and optimization. It is included with computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) in the collective abbreviation "CAx".

LS-DYNA Commercial FEA code

LS-DYNA is an advanced general-purpose multiphysics simulation software package developed by the former Livermore Software Technology Corporation (LSTC), which was acquired by Ansys in 2019. While the package continues to contain more and more possibilities for the calculation of many complex, real world problems, its origins and core-competency lie in highly nonlinear transient dynamic finite element analysis (FEA) using explicit time integration. LS-DYNA is used by the automobile, aerospace, construction and civil engineering, military, manufacturing, and bioengineering industries.

NASTRAN is a finite element analysis (FEA) program that was originally developed for NASA in the late 1960s under United States government funding for the aerospace industry. The MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC) was one of the principal and original developers of the publicly available NASTRAN code. NASTRAN source code is integrated in a number of different software packages, which are distributed by a range of companies.

Ansys American technology company

Ansys, Inc. is a global public company based in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. It develops and markets multiphysics engineering simulation software for product design, testing and operation. Ansys was founded in 1970 by John Swanson. Swanson sold his interest in the company to venture capitalists in 1993. Ansys went public on NASDAQ in 1996. In the 2000s, Ansys made numerous acquisitions of other engineering design companies, acquiring additional technology for fluid dynamics, electronics design, and other physics analysis. Ansys became a component of the NASDAQ-100 index on December 23, 2019.

Daxcon

Daxcon Engineering, Inc., is a company headquartered in Bartonville, Illinois, that provides engineering and manufacturing consultation to the Defense & Aerospace, Mining & Construction, Automotive, Consumer Products, and Agriculture industries. On 15 January 2010, it was acquired by Infotech Enterprises America Inc., which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Cyient, a firm in India.

NEi Nastran

NEi Nastran was an engineering analysis and simulation software product of NEi Software Based on NASA's Structural Analysis program NASTRAN, the software is a finite element analysis (FEA) solver used to generate solutions for linear and nonlinear stress, dynamics, and heat transfer characteristics of structures and mechanical components. NEi Nastran software is used with all major industry pre and post processors including Femap, a product of Siemens PLM Software, in house brands NEi Nastran in-CAD, NEi Fusion, and NEi Works for SolidWorks. This software was acquired by Autodesk in May 2014.

Femap is an engineering analysis program sold by Siemens PLM Software that is used to build finite element models of complex engineering problems ("pre-processing") and view solution results ("post-processing"). It runs on Microsoft Windows and provides CAD import, modeling and meshing tools to create a finite element model, as well as postprocessing functionality that allows mechanical engineers to interpret analysis results. The finite element method allows engineers to virtually model components, assemblies, or systems to determine behavior under a given set of boundary conditions, and is typically used in the design process to reduce costly prototyping and testing, evaluate differing designs and materials, and for structural optimization to reduce weight.

Abaqus software

Abaqus FEA is a software suite for finite element analysis and computer-aided engineering, originally released in 1978. The name and logo of this software are based on the abacus calculation tool. The Abaqus product suite consists of five core software products:

  1. Abaqus/CAE, or "Complete Abaqus Environment". It is a software application used for both the modeling and analysis of mechanical components and assemblies (pre-processing) and visualizing the finite element analysis result. A subset of Abaqus/CAE including only the post-processing module can be launched independently in the Abaqus/Viewer product.
  2. Abaqus/Standard, a general-purpose Finite-Element analyzer that employs implicit integration scheme (traditional).
  3. Abaqus/Explicit, a special-purpose Finite-Element analyzer that employs explicit integration scheme to solve highly nonlinear systems with many complex contacts under transient loads.
  4. Abaqus/CFD, a Computational Fluid Dynamics software application which provides advanced computational fluid dynamics capabilities with extensive support for preprocessing and postprocessing provided in Abaqus/CAE.
  5. Abaqus/Electromagnetic, a Computational electromagnetics software application which solves advanced computational electromagnetic problems.

GRAITEC is an Autodesk Reseller and developer of CAD / CAE software for the civil engineering and construction industries.

GRAITEC AdvanCAD / CAE software package developed by GRAITEC that includes three complementary software applications:

The Bridge Software Institute is headquartered at the University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville, Florida. It was established in January 2000 to oversee the development of bridge related software products at UF. Today, Bridge Software Institute has a leadership position in the bridge software industry and Bridge Software Institute products are used by engineers nationwide, both in state Departments of Transportation and leading private consulting firms. Bridge Software Institute software is also used for the analysis of bridges in various countries by engineers around the world.

Extreme Loading for Structures (ELS) is commercial structural-analysis software based on the applied element method (AEM) for the automatic tracking and propagation of cracks, separation of elements, element collision, and collapse of structures under extreme loads. AEM combines features of Finite element method and Discrete element method simulation with its own solver capabilities for the generation of PC-based structural analysis.

Applied Science International

Applied Science International, LLC, aka ASI is a United States-based company headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, that provides advanced engineering design and analysis software and services to the DHS, United States Department of Defense, Engineering Firms, Demolition Contractors, and Universities.

ScanIP 3D image processing and model generation software program by Synopsys Inc.

Synopsys Simpleware ScanIP is a 3D image processing and model generation software program developed by Synopsys Inc. to visualise, analyse, quantify, segment and export 3D image data from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), microtomography and other modalities for computer-aided design (CAD), finite element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and 3D printing. The software is used in the life sciences, materials science, nondestructive testing, reverse engineering and petrophysics.

StressCheck

StressCheck is a finite element analysis software product developed and supported by ESRD, Inc. of St. Louis, Missouri. It is one of the first commercially available FEA products to utilize the p-version of the finite element method and support the requirements of Simulation Governance.

Pam-Crash is a software package from ESI Group used for crash simulation and the design of occupant safety systems, primarily in the automotive industry. The software enables automotive engineers to simulate the performance of a proposed vehicle design and evaluate the potential for injury to occupants in multiple crash scenarios.

MSC Marc is a nonlinear finite elements analysis software used to simulate behavior of complex materials and interaction under large deformations and strains. It can also simulate multi-physics scenarios across structural, thermal, piezoelectric, electrostatic, magnetostatic, and electromagnetic behaviors. It uses automatic two-dimensional and three-dimensional remeshing to analyze structures undergoing large distortions, and crack propagation.

Predictive engineering analytics (PEA) is a development approach for the manufacturing industry that helps with the design of complex products. It concerns the introduction of new software tools, the integration between those, and a refinement of simulation and testing processes to improve collaboration between analysis teams that handle different applications. This is combined with intelligent reporting and data analytics. The objective is to let simulation drive the design, to predict product behavior rather than to react on issues which may arise, and to install a process that lets design continue after product delivery.

References

  1. "About Us". LUSAS website.
  2. "Civil and Structural engineering uses". LUSAS website.
  3. "Bridge engineering uses". LUSAS website.
  4. "General engineering uses". LUSAS website.
  5. "Composites engineering uses". LUSAS website.