Software enables users to solve static and dynamic calculations and rupture models enhance risk prediction, which is a major advantage for studying behavior of high strength steel parts.

The Mecalog Group, suppliers of products and services for the digital simulation of mechanical behavior, has just released version 5 of its leading software, Radioss, a solver for problems related to the mechanics of structures, fluids, and fluid-structure interactions. With its two completely parallelised implicit solution algorithms, version 5 enables users to solve both static and dynamic calculations. The development of new rupture models enhances risk prediction which is a major advantage for studying the behavior of high strength steel parts.

Up until recently, high strength steel parts were not typically involved during the process of testing the behavior of a vehicle during a crash, but their increased use introduces potential risks of rupture.

Thus, being able to simulate and accurately predict these risks is a major advantage to manufacturers.

Radioss is well suited to the simulation of rapid dynamic phenomena, such as the study of hyper-velocity impacts in space, and is also widely used for simulating shocks and crash in the automobile, aeronautics, rail and marine industries.

The latest version is enhanced with an implicit formulation capable of dealing with static, dynamic, and linear or non-linear problems that saves invaluable time for the user.

A collision simulation's initial equilibrium conditions can now be more easily integrated, and complex mechanical problems such as assembly behavior and fatigue analysis can be studied using a single solver.

New rupture models can now be associated with the material laws integrated in the software.

Users can take into account new physical states such as the initial static state of equilibrium and spring back after loading, a critical point for studying the response of a structure in a vehicle crash.

For example, a frontal crash regulation stipulates that a door must be able to open easily after a collision.

The simulation for this case must extend beyond the 100 ms duration of the crash to allow the vehicle structure to recover elastically.

* Overview of Radioss - the Radioss software, first released in 1987, includes general modules applicable to all industries, as well as specific modules such as Radioss Crash, for solving problems of collision, impact, passive safety, stamping, and hydroforming, and Radioss ALE-CFD-SPH for simulating fluid/structure interactions, fluid flow and sources of noise which are caused by a fluid/structure interaction.

In 2005, 9 cars out of 22 which obtained the maximum score of 5 stars awarded by EuroNCAP (the European New Car Assessment Program) for safety were designed with Radioss, the most widely used program in the automobile industry.

5 of the world's 10 leading manufacturers use it.

* About the Mecalog Group - the Mecalog Group, a French company founded in 1986 and headquartered in the city of Antony in the Hauts-de Seine department near Paris, employs 270 people, with subsidiaries in five countries (United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain) and seven regional agencies in France.

It has a distribution network in Asia, South America, and Australia.

The company has become the preferred partner of major industrialists through out the world in varied areas of activity: land, air and maritime transport, space, defense, nuclear power, civil engineering, biomedical products, equipment, and consumer goods.