Revolutionize Medical Device Industry with Sustainable Innovation

Posted on June 20, 2023September 13, 2024 by Surendiran R

The healthcare industry, alternatively referred to as the medical industry or the health economy, encompasses a diverse range of economic sectors dedicated to providing products and services aimed at addressing the various needs of patients across curative, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care domains. To address the demands of individuals and society, interdisciplinary teams of skilled professionals and para professionals work as part of the modern healthcare industry, encompassing three essential branches: services, products, and financing.

The healthcare sector is among the largest and fastest growing in the world. It accounts for more than 10% of the GDP in many developed countries, a significant portion of the economy.

Remarkable technological advancements have been made in the healthcare sector to extend and improve the quality of life for many people. Things that were supposed to be inconceivable a few years ago are now coming to pass. The product development of medical devices has a bright future. However, there are a lot of challenges. Here are some challenges that will be faced when bringing new devices to market.

Accelerate the Product Development Speed with Integrated Interface for Modeling & Simulation

Modeling and simulation create more design options in a low-risk and low-cost environment faster. Each product lifecycle stage is optimized for speed and efficiency through democratization beyond the specialists to help companies:

Understand the physics affecting device performance to comply with Statutory requirements
Expedite testing and approval processes with alternatives to costly animal and human testing
Streamline manufacturing processes for faster & smarter decision making

Product Complexity and Change Management while Reducing the Risk of Non-Compliance

The process of handling quality issues such as Corrective and Preventive Actions and product complaints is the single most significant source of regulatory risk for medical device manufacturers today worldwide.

Effective and efficient management of quality issues by improving traceability and compliance to industry standards and QMS while eliminating non-value-added activities to reduce waste and deliver unmatched quality, safety and potency reduces regulatory risks and enhances compliance.

Deliver Patient-Centric Experiences

Medical device manufacturers are investigating ideas to deliver superior personalized, patient-centric experiences that improve patient health. This shift in innovation is focused on both the therapies and medical technologies they create and the processes that support their ecosystem.

Delivering life-like, multi-scale and multi-physic models, enabling an end-to-end virtual environment for accelerated collaborative innovation, is one of the predominant challenges that medical device manufacturers face in current scenarios.

Knowledge Capitalization

Medical device manufacturing companies operate in numerous isolated divisions. To manage this, many organizations have structured, complex, matrix-based organization structures attempting to enhance cross-division communication and data exchange to streamline internal processes. However, the scope is beyond the actual requirements and norms under compliance and regulations.

The digitalization of businesses that leverage continuity across the entire innovation team will address this challenge. This will transform how they innovate and operate, driving significantly enhanced margins with patient-centric experiences and increased productivity and profits.

Revitalize the Value Chain

Healthcare companies look to enhance their competition by accelerating innovation, maximizing ROI and creating new, connected experiences for their patients. Business leaders see significant growth in collaborative invention, and new models will emerge throughout the manufacturing value chain and traditional supply chains.

Transform Development & Manufacturing Operations

Decision makers or stakeholders in the healthcare industry must continually evaluate how to improve manufacturing processes to drive efficiency, quality, and performance. Leveraging digital design and production processes presents an opportunity to accelerate innovation and new product introduction.

Setting up digital manufacturing, planning and execution solutions, delivering agile manufacturing and planning operations, and offering real-time visibility and control over the business processes performed by plants and suppliers are some of the critical challenges that need to be addressed to run the development process efficiently.

Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE Platform is a one stop solution which combines engineering, quality and regulatory compliance business processes. Companies can accelerate the product development process, enhance innovation, and deliver products in compliance with regulatory norms and patient-centric approach by implementing the digital experience platform.

To get more information on how the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform drives the innovation in the medical industry, please reach out to us at marketing@edstechnologies.com

What’s New in SIMULIA 2022x?

Posted on September 28, 2022October 4, 2024 by Varun Sharma

It’s both an exciting and challenging time for manufacturers to bring new products to market in this era of rapid innovation. Changing customer expectations and shrinking budgets are among the challenges. Manufacturers are therefore utilizing realistic simulation to gain a competitive advantage by lessening the need for physical testing, increasing product reliability, and reducing the time to market. For realistic structural simulation, SIMULIA Unified FEA provides a comprehensive solution that covers routine and advanced workflows across various industrial applications. Among the many updated features and improvements in SIMULIA 2022 (Abaqus, Isight, TOSCA, FESAFE), there are several significant ones. Following is a summary of some of the new features:

ABAQUS 2022

Users can easily create, edit, monitor, diagnose, and visualize advanced analyses using the Abaqus/CAE Complete Abaqus Environment. Using the intuitive interface, modeling, analysis, job management, and results visualization are integrated into a consistent, easy-to-use workspace, even for new users. With Abaqus/CAE, one can interact with computer-aided engineering concepts such as feature-based, parametric modeling, interactive and scripted operations, and user interface customization. The following paragraph covers the recent updates in different categories.

Structural Mechanics

The LaRC05 damage initiation criteria for fiber-reinforced composites are now available in Abaqus/Standard.
The Hosford-Coulomb damage initiation criteria for ductile metals are now available in both Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/Explicit.
The Valanis-Landel hyper elastic material model to analyse rubber-like materials is now available in Abaqus/Standard.
Band-limited damping in Abaqus/Explicit allows the user to apply a desired uniform damping ratio over a specified frequency range.
Distortion control is now available for the C3D10 element in Abaqus/Explicit.
Distributions to specify layer thicknesses for composite solid elements and use wedge (triangular prism) elements with a composite solid section definition.

Analysis Techniques

Cyclic symmetry analysis technique can be used now in Abaqus/Explicit to reduce simulation time and memory requirement.
Abaqus/Standard now enables running multiple nonlinear load cases within a single job. This new capability significantly reduces run time and the number of output files compared to running multiple jobs.
The import capability has been extended to transfer nodal temperatures and user-defined field variables between Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/Explicit.
The extended finite element method (XFEM) now supports procedures with temperature degrees of freedom.
Implicit dynamic analysis in Abaqus/Standard now supports adjoint sensitivities for topology, shell thickness, and lattice sizing design variables.

Modelling and Visualisation

Abaqus/CAE now provides a tool to remove selected data from an odb which can significantly reduce file size.
CATIA V5 geometry can now be directly imported into the Linux platform.
SOLIDWORKS assemblies can now be imported as multiple parts.
User control over shear flow visualization has been improved.
Abaqus/CAE now supports small-sliding general contact in Abaqus/Standard
Abaqus/CAE now supports analytical fields when defining composite ply thickness distributions.

Performance and HPC

Abaqus/Explicit can now be executed in hybrid mode using a combination of MPI and threads, with each MPI process launching a user-specified number of threads. Hybrid execution takes advantage of the Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) architecture and the trend of increasing the number of cores available on each socket.
The iterative linear equation solver in Abaqus/Standard now supports common modelling features, including hybrid elements, connector elements, distributing couplings, and hard contact.
Parallel scaling of linear static simulations with many load cases is significantly improved.

ISIGHT 2022

ISight provides designers, engineers, and researchers with an open system for integrating design and simulation models—created with various CAD, CAE, and other software applications—to automate the execution of hundreds or thousands of simulations. ISight allows users to save time and improve their products by optimizing them against performance or cost metrics through statistical methods, such as Design of Experiments (DOE) or Design for Six Sigma. ISight combines cross-disciplinary models and applications in a simulation process flow, automates their execution, explores the resulting design space, and identifies the optimal design parameters based on required constraints. ISight’s ability to manipulate and map parametric data between process steps and automate multiple simulations significantly improves efficiency, reduces manual errors, and accelerates the evaluation of product design alternatives. Recently the 2022 release of ISight was announced, with new developments that include feature enhancements and component updates. Highlights of ISight R2022 include:

Abaqus Component Upgrade

Isight Abaqus component creates a direct link to Abaqus, allowing automated execution of Abaqus from Isight
In Isight 2022, the Abaqus component is enhanced to support Abaqus 6.14 through Abaqus 2022 and maintenance releases thereof
No other functional changes to the component
Middleware upgrade
Apache TomEE
Isight 2021 & previous releases shipped Apache TomEE 1.7.2
Isight 2022 ships Apache TomEE 8.0.5
All the security fixes delivered by TomEE between these versions are now automatically available for SEE, Webtop, and Web Dashboard applications running on TomEE
Oracle database
The supported version of Oracle database is upgraded to Oracle 19c
Microsoft SQL Server database
The supported version of the Microsoft SQL Server database is upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server 2019
- Older releases of the Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server are not supported
- Support for the Oracle WebLogic application server has is removed
- Customers who were using Oracle WebLogic application server would need to migrate to IBM WebSphere or Apache TomEE application server
Isight/SEE 2022 Improved Stability and Reliability

FESAFE 2022

There are certain updates introduced in FE Safe 2022. Some are the enhancement are listed below: –

FE-SAFE: TCD (THEORY OF CRITICAL DISTANCES)

A new interface in 2021 FD04
The algorithm used at the sub-surface location for TCD calculation = algorithm chosen for the surface as shown below in the figure.
Expanded MSC options
New TCD and FOS tabs in Analysis Options

FE-SAFE: THERMO-MECHANICAL FATIGUE FROM ELASTIC-PLASTIC FEA

Based on DTMF technology developed at Fraunhofer IWM over the last 20 years
Available as a plugin for evaluation purposes to qualified users – Contact Hawla, De Morais, or Sobczak to arrange a call with the users
fe-safe/TURBOlife, already in CA, will become deprecated
Damage (1∕𝑁_𝑓 ) calculated per reversal and accumulated using Miner’s rule
Reversals determined via Wang & Brown multi-axial cycle counter
Damage (1⁄N_f ) calculated per reversal and accumulated using Miner’s rule
Reversals determined via Wang & Brown multi-axial cycle counter

FE-SAFE: GENERAL 2021 ENHANCEMENTS

FE-SAFE: GENERAL 2022 ENHANCEMENTS

Unified structural/fatigue licensing – 3DXEXPERIENCE & Fe Safe
Includes core-count-dependent token & credit licensing – same as for Abaqus
ANSYS RST support updated, including support for ANSYS Workbench Named Selections
Susmel-Lazzarin Infinite Life Method – previously only available for TCD
Surface Finish Definition/Property files – new .sfprop
Phone-home anti-cracking prevention

Durability execution on cloud/grid – 22xGA/FD01
Previously durability had to be solved locally
Compressive mean stress corrections for Verity line welds – 22xFD01
Spot Weld fatigue theory enhanced for complex loading
Corrections to the calculations for several algorithms, including Brown-Miller – 22xFD01
Qt upgrade – 22x GA

TOSCA 2022

Below are few of the recent updates incorporated in TOSCA 2022:

Usability

Unified Interpolation scheme for Topology optimization

Rib Design manufacturing constraint for Topology Optimization

More robust method to restrict the maximum member size in optimized structures.
It prevents floating material to a large degree and only affects the result if the thickness is violated.
NEW: Enforce manufacturing constraints in bead sensitivity optimization. It can improve the manufacturability of the final result.

Improved Maximum Member Constraint for Topology Optimization

This feature allows the user to create responses based on abaqus user subroutines, as shown below.
The user can create stress based or plasticity based responses.
Multiple responses can be used in a single optimization.
Examples : laminate failure criteria, plastic strain responses etc.

Manufacturing Constraints for Bead Sensitivity Optimization

This allows a user to continue an optimization that has ended prematurely
The user can change the maximum number of design cycles
The modification of convergence settings is also allowed
This differs from restart as all the optimization parameters calculated in the last cycle are preserved.

How to perform Geotechnical Analysis of Soil using ABAQUS

Posted on February 22, 2021September 13, 2024 by Narendra L Palande

The analysis of geotechnical problems is rather complex due to stress dependent material behavior and varying stiffness for loading and unloading conditions. Generally, soil has three different phases which are soil skeleton, pore air and pore water which often lead to complex interaction mechanism. Also, large deformation of soil continuum is observed under loading. Such complex behavior, boundary and material modelling can easily be found out and addressed by ABAQUS.

This blog mainly focuses on ABAQUS capabilities of soil modelling, material modelling, complex loading analysis, boundary modelling and analysis procedures used in geo-mechanics by taking the example of a laterally loaded pile.

Characteristics of Soil:

The typical granular soil composition is of three components viz solid, liquid, and gas. The solid components of soil are solid grains (resultant of weathered rocks). The liquid component is usually pore water (pore fluid), and the gas component is usually air. The gaps between the solid particles are called voids.

When soil is loaded, the pressure in pore fluid gets modified due to which the pore fluid flows and leads to the deformation of soil over a period of time. This deformation of soil can be analyzed by using mechanical and permeability properties of soil along with pore pressure boundary condition in ABAQUS.

Loading Conditions:

Material behavior of the soil is rather complex when compared with other engineering materials. Soil can be differentiated like granular soil (sand and gravel) and soft soil (clay or silts). When granular soils are loaded slowly, there will be a change in volume which results in excessive pore pressure that dissipates rapidly due to high permeability and is called as “Drained Loading”.

On the other hand, when soft soils are loaded, it generates excess pressure which is entrapped inside the pores because of low permeability. This condition is known as “Undrained Loading”. Generally, both loading conditions can be carried out in laboratory by using Tri-Axial test setup. Therefore, in numerous simulations, this complex behavior has to be taken into account.

Material Models:

Several material models are available in ABAQUS including elastic, plastic, pore fluid, concrete damage plasticity, concrete smeared cracking and plasticity models as discussed below.

ABAQUS built-in material model can deal with applications where fully coupled conditions are needed to simulate. There are exceptions where large deformation needs to be modelled with special techniques such as Discrete Element Techniques (DEM). Also, user defined material can be incorporated with VUMAT, UMAT framework. For laterally loaded pile, the following properties are used.

Contact Interaction for Geotechnical problem:

ABAQUS provides two algorithms for modeling contact interaction:

Contact pair algorithm – it is used where every possible surface pair has to define contact interaction including surface which may come in self contact. It is also based on master-slave definition.
General contact algorithm – it allows to define many or all regions with single interaction properties. This algorithm automatically decides master-slave surfaces.

ABAQUS also gives flexibility to find contact surface automatically within chosen parts or whole model.

In geotechnical analysis, where blast loading is carried out to analyze the structure load bearing capability, Eulerian domain needs to be defined. In such scenario, general contact has to define and it works very efficiently.

Element Selection:

To model fully or partially saturated fluid flow through a deforming porous medium, ABAQUS provides Pore Pressure Element type which can be used for soil and geostatic analysis. These elements have both displacement and pore pressure degrees of freedom. In second-order elements, the pore pressure degrees of freedom are active only at the corner nodes. Pore Pressure Elements are available for plane strain, axisymmetric, axisymmetric-asymmetric and for three dimensional problems.

Analysis Procedure:

ABAQUS Standard provides two different procedures to analyze the soil problems viz “Geostatic” & “Soil”. Also, soil like material, in case of large deformation, can be simulated using special techniques like

Coupled Eulerian-LaGrangian Techniques (CEL)
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Techniques (SPH)
Discrete Element Techniques (DEM)

Above techniques can be used for offshore foundation, crushing of soft rocks, mining & agricultural industries respectively. For laterally loaded pile the “Geostatic” & “Soil” procedures are used for analysis.

“Geostatic” procedure is normally used as the first step of a geotechnical analysis; in such cases gravity loads, initial stress state, void ratio distribution or saturation are applied during this step. Ideally, the loads and initial stresses should exactly equilibrate and produce zero deformations. The geostatic procedure requires that the initial stresses are close to the equilibrium state; the displacements corresponding to the equilibrium state might be large. “Soil” procedure is used to specify transient (consolidation) or steady-state response analysis of partially or fully saturated fluid-filled porous media.

Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC) Structure under Compression Load Conditions: ABAQUS/SIMULIA

Posted on October 23, 2020September 30, 2024 by Varun Sharma

Introduction

The RCC structure displayed below is subjected to displacement under static conditions in ABAQUS GUI. The basic purpose of using RCC is to absorb stresses (specifically tensile stresses) that arise in the structure. From a structural engineering point of view, concrete is weak in tension, and therefore it is reinforced accordingly with suitable material. To overcome the crack development due to variation in temperature and stresses (shrinkage) also, reinforcement is used. RCC also enhances the strength of concrete sections.

Geometry and meshing

To begin with, three parts were created:

The first part is a solid homogenous rectangular part as shown in the picture. It was specified as concrete.
Internally stirrups and wires were created, both of them aligned in parallel within the structure.

For concrete, C3D8R (An 8-node linear brick, reduced integration, hourglass control) was assigned. For internal wires and stirrups, T3D2 (A 2-node linear 3-D truss) were used.

Figure 1: 3D model of RCC with wire and stirrups reinforcement

Material

Under material definition, linear elastic property was assigned. Steel properties were used for stirrups and wire reinforcements. The outer body was considered as a concrete body, with solid homogenous sections. The reinforced body is considered as a truss section.

Loading and Boundary Conditions

The simulation was conducted under static conditions. During the first step, the RCC Beam remained at static conditions. Both sections internally and externally were under static conditions. During the second step, a displacement of 50 mm was given to see the deformation. Also, two distinctive boundary conditions were employed: primary one was given as pinned (U1–U2–U3=0) to fix the translational and rotational motion of the structure, while the secondary boundary condition was defined as a displacement of 50 mm in Y – directions as shown in Figure 2. The approach was to generate axial deformation. The analyses were performed using Abaqus/CAE.

Figure 2: Boundary conditions assigned to the RCC Structure

Interactions

Embedded interactions were defined between internal and external parts. 3D Solid – in – Solid principle was used while implementing the interactions. This technique helps us specify that an element or group of elements is embedded in “host” elements. Abaqus searches for the geometric relationships between nodes of the embedded elements and the host elements. Therefore, stirrups and wires were embedded in the concrete structure. Default fractional exterior tolerance value of 0.025 was specified. Figure 3 displayed below was based on the embedded interactions; the red area was considered as embedded while the outer area was considered as a host.

Figure 3: Embedded interactions defined between external and internal parts

Results

As expected, non-uniform displacement arises in the center of the structure. Higher stresses experienced throughout the structure are as shown in Figure 1. While plotting stress – strain graph along the length of the RCC, higher compression stresses were seen in comparison to tensile stresses.

Figure 4: Stresses and displacement arisen in the RCC Structure under linear elastic conditions

Conclusions

To conclude, ABAQUS is a well-suited integrated package for contact analysis. Modelling and simulation of RCC was presented in elementary way regardless of complex contact nonlinearity. Axial stress – strain displacement relationship under embedded interactions were studied in this case. In a similar way, more complex relationship such as stirrups and wire thickness influence, orientation of the wires or even more complex loading conditions can be investigated.

EDS Technologies helps customers to adopt right simulation solutions to tackle complex real-world problems. We also provide comprehensive training on SIMULIA suite of solutions for our customers. Contact us to know more about SIMULIA/Abaqus and how it can be effectively used to add value in your organization.

Category: SIMULIA