THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2021
The University of Illinois at Chicago announced last month that it would be participating in AnalySwift, LLC’s Academic Partner Program to accelerate development and adoption of new materials for manufacturing by predicting effects of porosity level on strength.
Specifically, the university plans to utilize the high-fidelity modeling software provider’s SwiftComp simulation software for researching new porous coatings for use in manufacturing.
About the Program
According to AnalySwift, the SwiftComp program is a general-purpose modeling code for composites and other heterogenous materials.
“SwiftComp is a general-purpose multiscale modeling code that enables users to perform efficient and accurate modeling of composites,” said Wenbin Yu, CTO of AnalySwift. “It can be used either independently as a tool for virtual testing of composites or as a plugin to power conventional FEA codes with high-fidelity multiscale modeling for composites. It saves hours in computing time and resources with accuracy comparable to modeling all the microstructural details using 3D FEA.
“SwiftComp quickly calculates the complete set of effective properties needed for use in macroscopic structural analysis. It can also predict accurate local stresses and strains in the microstructure for the purpose of predicting strengths, as well as thermal expansion of composites.”
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The University of Illinois at Chicago announced last month that it would be participating in AnalySwift, LLC’s Academic Partner Program to accelerate development and adoption of new materials for manufacturing by predicting effects of porosity level on strength. |
The modeling software provider adds that the specific program UIC plans to use directly and seamlessly links detailed microstructure and structural behavior for composite structures including beams, plates/shells and 3D structures.
Additional broad applications for the software include high strain composites in deployable space structures, printed circuit boards (PCBs), high-end fishing rods and honeycomb sandwich structures, among others.
“We used the Mechanics of Structure Genome concept, implemented in SwiftComp, to calculate the effective elastic and mechanical properties of porous coatings under different loading conditions,” said Dr. Arash Samaei, researcher at AMRL. “The test case for our study was zirconia-silica bilayer coating on aluminum alloy. The simulation results enabled us to understand the effects of porosity level on the strength of the macroscale structure. The local stress, strain fields helped us to study the failure mechanisms in such coatings under nanoindentation tips. SwiftComp allowed us to determine the effective properties of the materials that enabled us to accurately simulate the mechanical response of the components.
“In general, zirconia-silica conversion coatings are considered as a potential alternative to Chromium-based conversion coatings, which are fabricated with toxic chemicals. Not only can zirconia-silica-based conversion coatings provide excellent corrosion protection for metals and alloys used in aerospace applications, but they can also be manufactured using non-toxic chemicals via a plasma-based deposition process.”
On the research efforts, Santanu Chaudhuri, professor of materials engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago added, “We use nano-to-macroscale simulation tools to accelerate the development and adoption of new materials for manufacturing. Our group, Accelerated Materials Research Lab (AMRL), is in the Civil, Materials and Environmental engineering department at UIC. AMRL connects materials design to materials manufacturing and performance.
“Using computational and experimental methods, we develop novel methods for accelerating the transition of materials from design inception to deployment. AMRL tools and capabilities help realize the goals of computational materials design and connect synthesis to scalable materials processing for a circular economy.”
Through the APP program, universities are offered no-cost licenses for engineering software programs SwiftComp and VABS, further enabling students, researchers and faculty to leverage the tools in their academic research.
“We are excited by the work being done by the University of Illinois at Chicago on new materials for manufacturing and pleased they have selected SwiftComp as part of their simulation efforts,” said Allan Wood, President and CEO of AnalySwift.
Tagged categories: AnalySwift, LLC; Coating Materials; Coatings Research Group; Coatings Technology; Colleges and Universities; Paint analysis; Research; Research and development; Software; Technology
