LMS International announced the availability of the third release of LMS Virtual.Lab, its award-winning simulation environment for functional performance engineering. LMS Virtual.Lab offers an integrated software suite to simulate the performance of mechanical systems on attributes such as noise and vibration, durability, ride and handling and dynamic motion. With Rev 3, LMS Virtual.Lab covers all the critical process steps and required technologies to perform an end-to-end assessment of a design in every key discipline. LMS Virtual.Lab is based on CAA V5 (Component Application Architecture), the open middleware for PLM from Dassault Systèmes.
“LMS Virtual.Lab Rev 3 enables a powerful engineering process capable of refining critical functional performance attributes long before committing to physical prototyping,” commented Werner Pohl Corporate Vice-President and General Manager CAE Division. “LMS Virtual.Lab allows to accurately assess the radiated noise of a new engine design, the vibration comfort of a complete vehicle, or the fatigue resistance of an aircraft landing gear. Using Virtual.Lab, engineering teams can quickly and reliably analyze a multitude of design options, and drive major design choices from the perspective of key performance attributes.”
Innovative technologies included in Rev 3 dramatically speed up the building and testing of component and system-level virtual models. Newly introduced solvers, for example, accelerate acoustic calculations by a factor of 30 to 100, and deliver simulation results within one hour instead of one day. Through the integration of new hybrid simulation capabilities, Virtual.Lab Rev 3 allows to validate virtual models with test data, use real-world validated loads, and combine test models of existing components with virtual models of new components. This does not only accelerate virtual simulation, it also makes the simulation results more accurate and robust.
To further increase the impact of virtual simulation on key development processes, Virtual.Lab Rev 3 offers new application-specific modules for powertrain acoustics, powertrain dynamics, vehicle dynamics, full-vehicle NVH, component and system-level durability.
LMS Virtual.Lab Rev 3 integrates Design of Experiments (DOE), Response Surface Modeling (RSM) and Advanced Optimization techniques. These capabilities allow Virtual.Lab users to automatically assess a multitude of design alternatives, and to use robust design methodologies to assess the influence of real-world variability in a search for safer, higher-quality and better performing products.
LMS Virtual.Lab Rev 3 provides ANSYS users an active, associative link between Virtual.Lab and ANSYS for all linear structural analyses. Virtual.Lab users are not only able to access ANSYS modeling and results data, they can also make ANSYS an integral part of a Virtual.Lab-supported engineering process. By implementing Virtual.Lab, users also have the ability to automatically set up ANSYS solutions and drive the ANSYS solver
LMS Virtual.Lab Acoustics Rev 3 offers an integrated solution to minimize the radiated noise or optimize the sound quality of new designs before prototype testing. Convenient modeling capabilities combined with powerful solver technology and easy-to-interpret visualization tools reduce the full simulation process from days to just a couple of hours. LMS Virtual.Lab Acoustics allows to investigate the full scope of an acoustic problem from the actual source, over the structural vibrations, to the pure acoustic field. Typical applications include the noise engineering of engines and engine components, the acoustic engineering of intakes and exhausts, the noise control of aircraft engines, or the sound refinement of consumer electronics.
Within Rev 3, LMS Virtual.Lab Noise and Vibration is further enhanced to perform noise and vibration analyses on the level of a full vehicle or aircraft. It offers new synthesis techniques to build system models for vibration predictions, based on coupling the vibration modes of different components rather than using their full FE (Finite Element) model. This breakthrough accelerates the building of full-vehicle models, dramatically reduces their size, and boosts the speed of simulation runs. The unique modification prediction capabilities in LMS Virtual.Lab Rev 3 allow engineers to assess the noise and vibration performance of a design variant in a couple of minutes, and to quickly explore multiple options.
LMS Virtual.Lab Motion Rev3 offers a complete and integrated solution to simulate realistic motion and loads of mechanical systems. It allows engineers to quickly create and refine multibody models, to re-use CAD and FE (Finite Element) models, and to perform fast iterative simulations to assess the performance of multiple design alternatives. Engineers can use scalable models to execute conceptual kinematic studies, up to making more complex mechanical system models taking into account component flexibility. Dynamic component loads, gained through motion simulations can easily be used to drive subsequent durability or noise and vibration analyses within LMS Virtual.Lab.
LMS Virtual.Lab Powertrain Motion offers dedicated templates and interactive wizards that compress the time required to model powertrain assemblies from weeks to hours. It allows engineers to accurately predict the dynamic behavior of powertrain systems at high speed or under heavy-duty operations. It supports the analysis of valve train performance, powertrain reliability, engine vibrations, and engine sound quality.
LMS Virtual.Lab Motion Rev 3 also includes a new module for Belt and Chain, delivering an interactive wizard that helps compress the time required to create detailed multibody models of belts or chains. Users quickly get to complete virtual models that are built according to today’s best practises, integrating rpm speed controls for the simulation of stationary speeds, speed sweeps and transient run-ups.
LMS Virtual.Lab Vehicle Dynamics Rev 3 offers engineers a dedicated environment to efficiently set up and analyze suspension full vehicle and driveline models for in-depth vehicle dynamics studies. Users can simulate full-vehicle maneuvers and get immediate feedback on the vehicle’s ride and handling performance before testing the first prototype.
The new LMS Virtual.Lab module for Component Durability offers an integrated simulation environment to predict the fatigue hotspots and corresponding fatigue life. It combines dynamic component loads with stress results automatically derived from structural FE-meshes and fatigue material parameters. New durability post-processing allow to get immediate feedback on critical areas, to understand the root cause of fatigue problems and to quickly assess multiple design alternatives.
The LMS Virtual.Lab System-level Durability tightly integrates multibody simulations with flexible-body analyses and fatigue-life predictions. The entire simulation process runs within the same LMS Virtual.Lab environment, from model creation, over analysis preparation, loads cascading, and fatigue solving, up to the post-processing. LMS Virtual.Lab herewith offers the first easy-to-use solution to do fast, thorough durability studies on the full-level system level.
With LMS Virtual.Lab Optimization, LMS integrated a set of powerful capabilities for single and multi-attribute optimization. Through Design of Experiments (DOE) and Response Surface Modeling (RSM) techniques, engineers gain a rapid insight in all the possible design options that meet their requirements. Using advanced optimization routines, Virtual.Lab automatically selects the optimal design, taking into account its sensitivity to real-world variability, and meeting the strictest robustness, reliability and quality criteria.
About LMS International
LMS is an engineering innovation partner for companies in the automotive, aerospace and other advanced manufacturing industries. LMS enables its customers to get better products faster to market, and to turn superior process efficiency to their strategic competitive advantage. LMS delivers a unique combination of virtual simulation software, testing systems, and engineering services. We are focused on the mission critical performance attributes in key manufacturing industries, including structural integrity, handling, safety, reliability, comfort and sound quality. Through our technology, people and over 25 years of experience, LMS has become the partner of choice for most of the leading discrete manufacturing companies worldwide. LMS, a Dassault Systèmes Gold Partner, is certified to ISO9001:2000 quality standards and operates through a network of subsidiaries and representatives in key locations around the world.


