Ansys Discovery Live: Real-Time Simulation Revolution

SOLUTIONS Departments
ANSYS
DISCOVERY
LIVE: Revolution
Real-Time Simulation
With the revolutionary new ANSYS Discovery Live

solution, simulation is no longer a matter of hours or
days — it is instantaneous. Engineers can start seeing
simulation results in seconds after importing a geometry,
with no need for a high-performance computing system.
That is because all the computing is handled by the
graphics card (GPU), which has thousands of processors running in
parallel. Without pausing the simulation, they can change the design
and physics and immediately view the results. This interactivity and
instant feedback lets engineers experiment with more variables early in the
digital exploration stage of the design process, which is vital to developing
successful products in a highly competitive market.
By Justin Hendrickson, For the first time, engineers can explore design options using interactive physics in
Director, Product real time. A revolutionary simulation solution called ANSYS Discovery Live enables
Management, early design exploration and virtual experimentation in fluid, thermal, structural
ANSYS and modal applications. It makes simulation
faster and easier than ever by reducing setup,
solving and post-processing time to near zero.
ANSYS Discovery Live is intended for
engineers who are not full-time simulation
analysts. It enables them to concentrate on
product design and physics while the simulation
takes care of itself. Ease of use, speed and
interactivity are key features that make Discovery
Live highly valuable to the non-expert simulation user
who wants to explore the possibilities of many design options.
The simulation and design exploration is truly “live”: The simulation
Engineering insights and trends changes instantly whenever an engineer alters the conditions, without pausing or
are instantaneous, regardless of restarting the process. The effect is the same as experimenting with the design in real
changes to boundary conditions
time. Engineers can make decisions to switch between physics, modify geometry on
such as flow rates, material
types and inlet pressure. the fly and change the way results are displayed, all live.
50 ANSYS ADVANTAGE ISSUE 3 | 2017

GPUs Make Real-Time Simulation Possible The user can choose the way results are displayed, such as
Discovery Live is possible due in part to the dramatic this streamline representation of gas flow through a pipe.
increase in computational power provided by graphical
processing units (GPUs), which now exceed the power of central processing units (CPUs).
The newest GPUs can approach supercomputing capacities and speeds, so simulations can
be completed in seconds instead of hours. GPUs have an order of magnitude more compute
“ I was blown away by the speed and ease of use of Discovery.

The time to complete an analysis is on the order of minutes as opposed to hours.
You will be able to perform your first analysis in less than 15 minutes.
— Travis Jacobs, Founder & Principal, Jacobs Analytics
”
power than CPUs. A $500 GPU card today has thousands of processors running in parallel;
a similar CPU card has eight. While individual CPU cores are somewhat faster than GPUs,
ANSYS decided to take advantage of the overwhelming improvement in compute power —
resulting in a thousand-fold speedup in time — to obtain simulation results in seconds
instead of minutes, hours or days.
© 2017 ANSYS, INC. ANSYS ADVANTAGE 51

ANSYS Discovery Live (continued)
Writing Software for Massively Parallel Solvers

Software written for CPUs will not run on GPUs automatically. ANSYS engineers
built a new solver from the ground-up to work natively on the GPU architecture.
They started with the proven and trusted numerical methods that
are the backbone of the ANSYS product line
and adapted them to the massively
parallel architecture of
the GPU. This involved
the invention of
new, proprietary
algorithms and
approaches that take
advantage of the tremendous
computing power that GPUs provide. And,
because GPUs are currently improving faster than
A 1,300-part modal simulation
Moore’s law predicts (while CPUs are evolving more slowly), basing
is solved in 30 seconds. Discovery Live on GPUs ensures speed and computation improvements for many
years to come. Another key was adapting ANSYS SpaceClaim as the platform for
Discovery Live. Because Discovery Live includes all of SpaceClaim’s tools for creating
and modifying geometry, engineers can take any 3-D model and not only simulate it,
but also change it, all while the simulation is running. As soon as a modification is
made, the result instantly updates, with no re-meshing involved. For simulation to
be a driving force in 3-D design, it is critical that a designer be able to make edits to
improve a design within the simulation itself.
“ This is by far the fastest, easiest and most intuitive tool I’ve seen for CFD.
Starting with a parametric model, skipping the mesh and watching it steady up in
real time is really something special. Being able to modify the components in real
time speeds up iteration intervals in a way I haven’t been able to calculate.
— Waylan Elmenhurst, Founder and Principal, 4D RD&D
”
Model Complexity is No Longer a Factor
With Discovery Live, running quick structural simulations of an entire engine
block, complete with cooling channels and tens of thousands of faces can be done
in a matter of seconds. The user simply has to choose a material; apply a load to,
for example, the piston cylinder faces where combustion will take place and
generate a lot of force; and see the stresses throughout the entire 3-D volume of the
engine in seconds. They can even animate the simulation deformation results with
a simple click.
How can a complex engine block with tens of
thousands of faces be solved so quickly? The answer
is that the complexity of the shape is not a significant
factor in solve time. Simulation in Discovery Live
depends primarily on the volume of the geometry being
solved, not its complexity.
Gaining Flexibility with Little Loss of Accuracy

Discovery Live enables the user to choose higher speed
or higher fidelity for a given simulation. In effect, this
Instant volumetric thermal simulation shows mixing of fluids.
Speed of Discovery Live

ansys.com/speed
52 ANSYS ADVANTAGE ISSUE 3 | 2017

“ I never thought I’d be able to do CFD modeling unless I pursued a higher
level engineering degree. I was able to complete structural simulations in
Discovery Live after tinkering with it for just a few hours. The intuitive UI made
it easy for me to utilize which streamlined my solution process.
— Olivia Lim, Materials/Structures Engineer, Airloom Energy
”
sets the size of the smallest feature that will be resolved and allows the user to make
the trade-off between simulation speed and fidelity.
The interactivity and speed of Discovery Live provides engineers with
unprecedented flexibility to explore design options very early in the development
process. This flexibility encourages investigation of
many more possibilities in a short time, potentially
uncovering new or breakthrough ideas that can then be
refined and further developed. Discovery Live provides
directional solutions — indications that changing a
certain parameter or geometric feature moves the
design in the desired direction. Once a promising
design is identified in Discovery Live, engineers can
seamlessly export it to ANSYS Mechanical, ANSYS CFD
or ANSYS AIM software to run simulations for high
accuracy and higher-fidelity results.
Seeing is Believing
With Discovery Live, ANSYS takes simulation in a whole
new direction that will enable all engineers to benefit,
no matter their level of expertise. The ability to see
simulation results almost instantly is a quantum leap
in how engineering simulation will be employed in
the future. Real-time results that were never before
possible, when utilized early in product development,
save costs later, when design changes become
exceedingly expensive. Better still, leveraging the tool’s
interactivity, users can experiment with Discovery Live can easily switch between physics — from the
more design options. Extensive early experimentation external airflow around a vehicle to the mechanical stresses
can uncover novel designs that may have been missed on the same vehicle — in seconds.
using traditional processes, resulting in breakthrough
products. That is why it’s called ANSYS Discovery Live: For the first time, every
engineer will have the power of live experimentation to help them discover and
unlock the next big idea.
THE FOUR KEY STRENGTHS OF DISCOVERY LIVE

1) SPEED. Simulation is so fast it seems “live.” The computational power of GPUs coupled with an
efficient architecture from ANSYS makes this speed possible.
2) EASE OF USE. Meshing is eliminated and the software makes all simulation setup decisions so the
user can concentrate on the physics and not on the solver.
3) NEW METHODS. New simulation methods allow for simulation of dirty CAD geometry or faceted data
such as an STL file. These approaches mean that model complexity will not slow down the solve time.
4) INTERACTIVITY. Interactive functionality enables engineers to change physics, geometry and result
displays on the fly, allowing for exploration of ideas as fast as they occur.
© 2017 ANSYS, INC. ANSYS ADVANTAGE 53

Ansys Discovery Live: Real-Time Simulation Revolution

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ansys Discovery Live: Real-Time Simulation Revolution

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ansys Discovery Live: Real-Time Simulation Revolution

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

SOLUTIONS Departments

With the revolutionary new ANSYS Discovery Live

50 ANSYS ADVANTAGE ISSUE 3 | 2017

“ I was blown away by the speed and ease of use of Discovery.

© 2017 ANSYS, INC. ANSYS ADVANTAGE 51

Writing Software for Massively Parallel Solvers

Gaining Flexibility with Little Loss of Accuracy

Speed of Discovery Live

52 ANSYS ADVANTAGE ISSUE 3 | 2017

THE FOUR KEY STRENGTHS OF DISCOVERY LIVE

© 2017 ANSYS, INC. ANSYS ADVANTAGE 53

You might also like