nCode DesignLife is an up-front design tool that identifies critical locations and calculates realistic fatigue lives from leading finite element (FE) results for both metals and composites.
nCode DesignLife features advanced capabilities to rapidly deliver accurate fatigue life predictions. Major OEMs and their suppliers use nCode DesignLife worldwide to answer questions like “how long will it last?” or “will it pass the test?” before a prototype is even made.
About HBM nCode
HBM nCode combines over 30 years’ of experience in fatigue and durability to develop world leading software for use in a diverse range of industries. Its technologies enable organizations to automatically analyze, interpret, and manage high volumes of measured data to provide durability and operational performance information about their products and equipment. This allows organizations to improve their understanding of product integrity and performance; predict component life and durability; and reduce maintenance, warranty and lifecycle costs. Established in 1982, HBM nCode has direct sales and support offices in the United Kingdom, United States, France and Germany. For more information, please visit www.ncode.com.
"nCode DesignLife has helped us to minimize the development time and cost associated with building prototypes and has also enabled us to evaluate multiple design concepts in a short period of time."
–CAE Engineer
Tower International
Key Features & Benefits
nCode DesignLife features advanced capabilities to rapidly deliver accurate fatigue life predictions. A detailed list of DesignLife modules available through the Altair Partner Alliance can be found on the Modules section on the left navigation, highlights include:
- Solvers for strain-life, stress-life, Dang Van, multi-axial, and safety factor
- Advanced solvers for spot and seam welded structures, adhesive bonds, high temperature fatigue, short fibre composites, and vibration
- Support of leading FE result files formats, e.g. OptiStruct
- Automatic identification of critical areas
- Correlation between test and CAE data [video]
- Importing Bill of Materials (BOM) to map material data to model
- Signal processing and loads analysis tools
- Ability to utilize linear static, modal superposition, transient, vibration, and non-linear FE models
- Complex load mapping, flight spectra, duty cycle preparation
- Automatic reporting, including processing by part number
- Open-source Python for customizing processes
- Materials database
Users also benefit from the ability to:
- Perform virtual durability assessment up-front to predict and manage product life
- Confidently reduce cost and weight
- Take better products to market faster
- Perform easier and faster fatigue life analysis
- Dramatically reduce time to set-up and process long loading histories and large FE models
- See and interact with intermediate results at each stage for greater confidence
- Publish libraries of approved processes to enforce procedures across departments, contractors and suppliers
Gallery
Predict fatigue life and damage using a wide range of CAE fatigue analysis methods
Solvers for high temperature fatigue and creep uses stress and temperature results from FEA
Get fast and direct simulations of vibration shaker tests in the frequency domain using DesignLife.
Perform stress-life fatigue calculations for anisotropic materials in nCode DesignLife
Correlate calculated stresses and strains, etc. and compare them against measured values
Performs fatigue life of welds using FE models consisting of either shell or solid elements
Apply virtual strain gauges to quickly look at how stresses & strains compare to measured values
nCode DesignLife is certified by GL RC Guideline for the Certification of Wind Turbines (2010)
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Industry Applications
nCode DesignLife has been used in a variety of industrial applications, including:
Automotive, Aerospace, Consumer Goods, Defense, Heavy Equipment, Marine, Medical Equipment, Off-highway, Offshore, Oil & Gas, Rail, Sporting Goods, Wind Energy and University/Research
Product Interfaces
DesignLife has interfaces with Altair’s HyperMesh, HyperStudy, HyperView, MotionSolve and OptiStruct; as well as Converse by PART Engineering GmbH.
