The US Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) can now increase the access to and scalability of complex government simulation code that is often used to design and analyze defense-related technology thanks to the customizability of the ANSYS (NASDAQ: ANSS) Application Customization Toolkit.
As a joint project pursued under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA), ANSYS and ARDEC enabled the integration of legacy government code, such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) in-house code, using the ANSYS Workbench™ platform and its Application Customization Toolkit (ACT). The highly-configurable ACT extension brings increased ease-of-use, scalability, interoperability with ANSYS Workbench components and customization to traditionally challenging government simulation code used to design and analyze government technology.
Due to the complexity of many government simulation tools used to simulate defense technology, the number of engineers who can successfully employ these powerful tools is limited. To bridge this usability gap, ANSYS and ARDEC created the extension to host LLNL’s in-house code within the flexible ANSYSWorkbench environment. This new user interface allows government entities to retain the power of their legacy simulation technology while further streamlining simulation pre-processing in an easy-to-learn environment.
By combining the configurability of ACT with the power of traditional government solvers, we’re not only reducing overall simulation time for ARDEC but also broadening this extension’s reach so other government entities can take advantage of these tools as well,” said Robert Terhune, ARDEC liaison to ANSYS.
We are excited to partner with ARDEC to address difficult simulation problems facing this entire industry,” said Shane Moeykens, strategic partnership manager at ANSYS. “ARDEC and ANSYS have taken on this task to not only make these tools more scalable, but to bring a truly unique customization capability to this sector so it can continue to efficiently develop cutting-edge defense technology.
ACT is the tool for customizing the ANSYS Mechanical™ interface within Workbench and is available as part of the ANSYS Customization Suite product – this also includes the Workbench Software Development Kit. The first version of this ANSYS and ARDEC user-environment extension was released in April 2013 and will be distributed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Much of LLNL’s funding for its in-house code has been provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
