Firehole Composites today announced the release of Helius:MCT v5.0, their platform for finite element analysis of composite materials. Built upon the tenet of offering accurate, efficient analysis of composite structures, the newest version delivers a package of customer-driven enhancements and new features designed to provide even more flexibility and efficiency to its users.

A distinguishing capability of Helius:MCT is the solution robustness offered by its proprietary, composites-specific simulation methods. The technology permits accurate progressive failure analysis of composite structures while being computationally efficient. Results are not only achievable, but are fast, repeatable, and with built-in constituent-based failure criteria, are physically meaningful. Version 5.0 includes enhancements to further improve the efficiency and robustness of analyses using cohesive zone modeling to simulate delamination and disbonding. With early use, Firehole’s commercial aircraft customers have seen a 20-50% reduction in processing time of certain de-bond analyses.

Firehole has also broadened the utility of Helius:MCT by extending this technology to additional failure criteria and opening its platform to user-defined criteria. The package now offers a multitude of the leading composite failure criteria - including some of the recent developments by Hashin, Puck and Christensen. “While we believe the future of composites analysis is in multiscale techniques, our customers have requirements that may necessitate other methods. With version 5.0 we have created a robust, extensible platform for all composites engineers,” said Jerad Stack, Firehole’s CEO.

Collaborations with aerospace design teams and their own diverse composite analysis experience have given Firehole a constructive opportunity to understand the needs of composite analysts. “We work closely with our customers to understand their requirements and keep a pulse on the best composites material simulation techniques available from industry, government and academic research,” says Firehole Chief Technology Officer Emmett Nelson. “In v5.0, we have implemented many of those requirements in a robust software platform and delivered it to our customers with the same reliability, performance and expert support our customers expect from Helius:MCT.”

Other enhancements available in Helius:MCT v5.0 include extended support for Linux, Abaqus 6.12 and ANSYS 14. Additional solution time efficiency is achieved with the implementation of an ultimate failure monitor. Referred to as the Job Terminator, the feature can monitor an analysis for ultimate failure and terminate the processing - saving precious computing resources and time.

For more information about Helius:MCT 5.0, visit http://www.firehole.com/products/mct/.