Add-on Modules for Simulation

• Creates accurate and high-quality tetrahedral volume meshes from your CT scans which can be used for mechanical, fluid, thermal, electrical, and other FEM simulations in third-party software
• Based directly on the subvoxel-accurate surface determination for single or multiple materials in your scanned components or material probes * 
• Creates a tetrahedral mesh for each selected material component, with congruent tetrahedron faces and shared nodes at material interfaces 
• No intermediate surface mesh—thus avoiding loss of geometry information 
• Flexible adaptation of the geometric accuracy of the volume meshes for each material
• Option to create a finer mesh for a particular Region of Interest 
• Generates high-quality, solver-ready meshes 
• The mesh quality can be assured using statistics for tetrahedron count, shape parameters (aspect ratios, radius ratios, dihedral angles), and sizes 
• Export of the generated volume meshes in .pat (PATRAN ®) or .inp (Abaqus) format 
• Each cell of the generated volume mesh can be loaded with additional information which may be required for simulation, such as fiber orientations, fiber volume fractions, porosity volume fractions **, or gray values 
• Complete workflow from CT scan to volume mesh in one software

*Requires the Coordinate Measurement Module 
** Requires the respective modules

• Performs virtual stress tests on your scanned part and helps you assess the impact of discontinuities on the part’s stability. 
• Identifies the most likely locations of failure with the automatic hot spot analysis. 
• Works directly on voxel data and eliminates meshing as a source of error. 
• Supports three types of static loads: directed force, torque, and pressure. 
• Calculates and visualizes force lines, local displacements, and failure-related variables such as von Mises stress or the maximum principal stress. 
• Simulates both the actual part with all its discontinuities and shape deviations as well as the CAD model, allowing comparisons between the two. 
• Is easy to use.
• Works even on highly complex structures such as foams or other porous media. 
• Suitable for components or probes made from one or multiple linear-elastic materials. 
• Fast distributable computing on up to 16 network computers (requires Structural Mechanics Cluster Extension).

• Perform microstructure level virtual flow and diffusion experiments directly on CT scans of porous and multi-component materials – no meshing required.
• Calculate homogenized material properties such as absolute permeability, tortuosity, formation factor, molecular diffusivity, electrical resistivity, thermal conductivity, or porosity.
• Calculate tensor-valued material properties for anisotropic samples.
• Stop and re-start the calculation at any time to inspect intermediate results.
• Use microstructure level simulation results in largescale simulations by enriching imported mesh cells in various formats (e.g., NASTRAN®, PATRAN®) with homogenized material properties determined with VGSTUDIO MAX and use these enriched mesh cells in third-party simulation software.
• Use one or more GPUs to speed up calculations thanks to OpenCL.

Capillary Pressure Module

Part of the Transport Phenomena Simulation Module

• Provides quantities that are used, e.g., in geosciences to characterize soil and rock samples
• Computes the pore size distribution and the capillary pressure drainage curve for a scanned porous material
• Performs virtual MICP (mercury injection capillary pressure) experiments