Actran 2022: Acoustic simulation, made better
Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium, October 22, 2021 – Free Field Technologies, part of Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division, today announced the Actran 2022 suite comprising new acoustic, vibro-acoustic and aero-acoustic technologies which will provide acoustic and NVH engineer access to new tools, allow them to build more consistent and accurate models and empower them with new features that provide more flexibility.
Following the new, redesigned interface introduced in Actran 2021, further efforts have been applied in improving the user experience of ActranVI to make it even easier to create and modify an acoustic model. The result is an improved model tree structure that can be organized in multiple trees and is highly customizable. Up to five trees (Topology, Materials, Tables, Analysis, Visual) can be displayed on the same screen and search options have been also introduced such that a user can quickly access a specific component or domain when the list of those is too long. This new organization will definitely improve the readability and creation of models.
Figure 1 - ActranVI 2022 - Tree Overview
Automotive manufacturers can address their NVH challenges in a more efficient way and with greater flexibility. Various improvements and new features have been brought to mid- and high-frequency modeling with Actran Virtual SEA, including the flexibility for engineers to provide their own coupling loss factors (CLFs) and damping loss factors (DLF), improved anechoic conditions, a new wizard that helps engineers assemble an SEA system on the base of panel transmission loss.
Figure 2 - Actran SEA module - Transmission Loss-based SEA wizard
The Actran Workflow Manager has been enriched with a new connected Nastran-Actran space workflow that streamlines the process of coupling both tools while providing outputs that are consistent with the Nastran file format. When providing a modal extraction coming from Nastran SOL103 and an Actran input file for space, the complete chain of simulation will sequentially: read the SOL103 and recover the output quantities, launch the modal extraction, launch the Actran computation using the modes previously computed to obtain all results requested in the SOL103 and provided in Nastran format.
Figure 3 - New workflow for space applications
NVH engineers can also enjoy new trimmed body enhancements that provide the capability to couple modal components to analytical trim formulations, allow engineers to find which part of the structure has the most significant effect on the sound pressure via panel participation factor simulation and provide better insights with dedicated post-processing for these simulations with new phasor (polar) plots in PLTViewer.
Figure 4 - Modal-modal connection with analytical trim formulations
Further improvements have also been brought to aeroacoustic simulation that enhance the stability of simulations in the presence of shear flows. This new implementation is available with Actran DGM, the high-order Discontinuous Galerkin solver that can handle efficiently high frequencies and large models. In addition to that, a new porous component solving the fluid equivalent equations for porous media based on the Miki semi-empirical model has been added to Actran DGM, which allow the modeling of large domains involving porous materials (such as absorbers) at high frequencies. A dedicated tool in ActranVI named Poles Fitting has been created to complement the usage of this new porous component.
Figure 5 - New advances for aircraft aeroacoustics
Aligned with previous releases, the Actran 2022 suite integrates a panel of HPC strategies including multithreading and message passing interface parallelism (MPI). Alongside with the multiple MPI parallelisms options available in Actran (frequency, matrix, load case or axisymmetric order parallelism) and solving strategies (single-precision arithmetic, Block Low Rank (BLR) Factorization, compression graph analysis, mesh adaptivity) the update of the MUMPS (Multifrontal Massively Parallel Solver) solver now offers GPU acceleration for in-core direct frequency responses. The GPU acceleration is the perfect solution to further boost up to x10 your computation time performances if you have already reached the edge of your HPC strategy.
Supported Platforms and Productline Installation
Access the list of operating systems supported by Actran 2022 on the dedicated Actran platform definitions webpage. Would you have any questions related to the Actran installation and licensing, please refer to the Actran Productline Installation webpage.
Learn more about what's new in Actran 2022 on Simcompanion.
Donwload Actran 2022 on the MSC Software Download center.
For all the new features and further explanations, register for the webinar introducing Actran 2022 here.
About Free Field Technologies, part of Hexagon
Hexagon is a global leader in sensor, software and autonomous solutions. We are putting data to work to boost efficiency, productivity, and quality across industrial, manufacturing, infrastructure, safety, and mobility applications. Our technologies are shaping urban and production ecosystems to become increasingly connected and autonomous – ensuring a scalable, sustainable future.
Free Field Technologies (FFT) is a leading global company focused on acoustic simulation and engineering services. Actran, FFT’s software product, leads numerous technology trends of vibro-acoustic and aero-acoustic modeling since 1998, when the company was founded by Prof. Jean-Pierre Coyette and Prof. Jean-Louis Migeot, two renowned pioneers in the domains of numerical acoustics. Learn more at www.fft.be.
Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division provides solutions that utilize data from design and engineering, production and metrology to make manufacturing smarter. For more information, visit hexagonmi.com.
Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) has approximately 20,000 employees in 50 countries and net sales of approximately 3.8bn EUR. Learn more at hexagon.com and follow us @HexagonAB.