SOUTHPOINTE, Pa., Nov 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, today announced the first commercial simulation of more than 1 billion computational cells using software from ANSYS -- a significant milestone for the Company and the industry. An Italian research team headed by Ignazio Maria Viola, a member of the engineering group that worked with the Luna Rossa Challenge team for the 2007 America's Cup yacht racing competition, conducted the landmark simulation during August 2008 to investigate the aerodynamics of an America's Cup yacht. As the use of simulation becomes increasingly mission-critical in creating "winning" products -- and at the same time reducing cost and cycle time -- resolving this scale of problem becomes imperative in order to address the simulation of full systems or subsystems.

Computational cells are an essential element in the engineering simulation process. To perform a simulation, the surface area and/or volume of the geometry under consideration is broken down into hundreds of thousands, or millions, of smaller domains known as cells. Equations are solved to predict fluid flow or stress within each cell to produce an overall total simulation solution. The higher the cell count, the more detailed and comprehensive the simulation can be. Just 15 years ago, simulations of 60,000 cells were considered groundbreaking. More recently, simulations using hundreds of millions of cells have been performed by leaders in the industry. Exceeding 1 billion cells for a simulation has been the latest stretch goal for those pushing the envelope in engineering simulation.

ALGOR, Inc., a leading provider of design, analysis and simulation software, announced that its latest, major finite element analysis (FEA) software release, ALGOR V23, significantly upgrades the computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools that ALGOR users worldwide rely on for design and analysis of their products.

New and improved modeling features include: "smart" bonded contact uses multi-point constraints to bond the surfaces of unmatched meshes, making hand-built models easier to tie together and CAD models easier to mesh; models created in ThinkDesign from think3, Inc. can be opened in ALGOR for fully associative analysis; a new utility generates vertices and beams to replace non-essential surfaces, thereby reducing model size and promoting faster analysis; additional material models (Ogden and Mooney-Rivlin hyperelastic and viscoelastic) for membrane elements expand nonlinear analysis capabilities for rubber materials; and, in fluid flow analysis, multiple prescribed velocities can be defined using separate load curves for increased control and flexibility.