About SIMPLAS
Macroscopically-observed phenomena in nature can only be simulated by a nonlinear (e.g. tree leaves under wind pressure) and nonsmooth (e.g. contact and fracture) analysis product. SIMPLAS Software is a nonlinear and nonsmooth finite element product created as a direct-use simulation package and also as a software library for custom implementations. SIMPLAS is also a Software suite which allows the end user to produce professional results effectively and efficiently. For example, extracting data from the results database to produce high quality vector figures is a simple task. The SIMPLAS code is a result of more than fifteen years of experimentation in discretization techniques and a deep study on directed graph databases and sparse solvers. The use of these two related ingredients allows a rigorous and efficient development cycle and simplified usage patterns. The greatest benefit is competitive flexibility of use and configuration. Since a rigorous coding discipline and a graph database is used, a reduced developer team can provide a professional-grade product for the end users. Contrasting with other simulation software companies, we focus exclusively on the solution stage of the analysis process. Only orthogonal compatible features are incorporated and a rigorous QA process ensures that new features have at least one year of internal testing and Peer-Review publications before reaching the end-user. Although part of the pre-processing is performed by SimPre, subsidiary tasks, such as mesh generation and post-processing are relegated to compatible external tools (specifically GiD and ParaView). Customization can be either performed by our team or by advanced users of SIMPLAS. It allows virtually unlimited configuration and extension by advanced users. As a company, we value reliability over “state-of-the-art” and consistency over “cutting-edge features”. Innovations in algorithms and element technology are published by the developers and inserted in the end-user version SIMPLAS in a gradual form. For the inexperienced user, a number of well tested finite elements (more generally cliques), boundary conditions (more generally multiple point constraints) and constitutive laws are pre-installed. In SIMPLAS, discretization features are partitioned in four classes:
- Cliques (elements and inequality constraints, natural boundary conditions). Interactions (contact and cohesive laws) are also clique-based.
- Multiple point constraints (essential boundary conditions, rigid body constraints).
- Constitutive laws.
- Solution methods (sparse linear solvers, nonlinear and nonsmooth solvers).
As mentioned, both the services of SIMPLAS and advanced users of SIMPLAS can introduce instances in these four classes, customizing the analysis for specific Engineering problems.