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ESATAN-TMS r2

Release Notes
September 2009
Copyright © 2009 ITP Engines UK Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

For the latest version of this document or for general information and support, please
visit our web site at: www.esatan-tms.com

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Table of Contents
1 Introduction............................................................................................................3
2 New Developments................................................................................................3
2.1 Support for Definition of Groups...................................................................3
2.2 Improved Import of an MSC Nastran FE Mesh.............................................5
2.3 Maintenance & Minor Enhancements ...........................................................6
2.3.1 Improved Handling of Large Models ....................................................6
2.3.2 Geometric Tolerances ............................................................................6
2.3.3 ESATAN-TMS Thermal Improvements................................................7
2.4 Problem Fixes ................................................................................................7
2.4.1 ESATAN-TMS Workbench...................................................................7
2.4.2 ESATAN-TMS Thermal........................................................................8
2.5 Points To Note ...............................................................................................8
3 Importing Models into ESATAN-TMS Workbench .............................................8
3.1 Upgrading Models From Previous Versions..................................................8
3.2 Importing ESATAN Thermal Models into ESATAN-TMS Workbench ......9
4 Contact Information .............................................................................................10

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1 Introduction
The ESATAN Thermal Modelling Suite was released in March 2009 and was the
culmination of a series of major developments, aimed at enhancing the product as a
complete thermal modelling environment, bringing together ESARAD, ESATAN and
ThermNV. ESATAN-TMS r2 includes a number of recent developments that further
enhance the modelling process. In summary, the release contains a new “Groups”
facility that allows groups of geometric entities to be defined and then referenced
within the definition of boundary conditions and user-defined conductors. An
improved facility to load MSC Nastran FE meshes and further improvements to the
handling of large models, typically seen when dealing with models generated from
CAD or FEA.
A number of further minor enhancements to the product have been made and a
number of reported issues are fixed by this release, see section 2.4 for a complete list.
This release contains an update to the model storage format and, as with the last
release of the product, when a model from an earlier release is opened the option of
automatically upgrading the model is given. See section 3.1 for more information.

2 New Developments
The following sections provide a detailed description of the new developments
contained within the release.
• Support for Definition of Groups
• Improved Import of an MSC Nastran FE Mesh
• Maintenance & Minor Enhancements
• Problem Fixes
• Points To Note

2.1 Support for Definition of Groups


The concept of Groups has been added to ESATAN-TMS Workbench that allows a
named collection of geometric entities to be defined. A Group can be any combination
of shells, shell sides, faces or thermal nodes and an entity can exist in any number of
Groups. The Group is defined through the new Define Group dialog and the contents
of the group can be entered directly or by picking within the 3D visualisation. The
Group can then be used in the definition of Boundary Conditions and User Defined
Conductors.

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If we consider the case of a Boundary Condition, for example an applied heat load
spread across a number of discrete faces, it was previous practice to define separate
boundary conditions for each face. With the introduction of the concept of a Group, a
single Group can be defined, containing the complete application region of the heat
load, and then a single Boundary Condition introduced with the Group specified as
the reference. This both simplifies the model definition and avoids unnecessary
duplication of data. Similarly, for the case of User Defined Conductors, a Group can
be defined either as the source or the destination reference.
On export to the ESATAN file, the Group definition is automatically converted into a
list of thermal node numbers and the appropriate language generated. The Group
definition itself is exported to the ESATAN file (as a character user constant) to allow
easy referencing of the Group in the model, particularly within calls to ESATAN
library routines. An extract from a generated ESATAN input file is shown below. Not
only are the Groups defined as constants, calls to PRTGRP (ESATAN output routine
to print general data of a group of nodes) are automatically generated within the
output block.

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2.2 Improved Import of an MSC Nastran FE Mesh
ESATAN-TMS geometry definition can be created from an FE mesh through loading
an MSC Nastran file (.nas or .bdf) using the Nastran Converter available from the
Workbench Utilities menu. In the process of generating the geometry data, the
Converter translates Quad elements into ESATAN-TMS quadrilateral shells. The
assumption within ESATAN-TMS is that the shells are planar; in practice we have
found that the translated Quad elements can be outside the geometric tolerance used
within ESATAN-TMS. In previous versions of ESATAN-TMS the shells outside the
tolerance are automatically modified to be planar with repeated warnings presented to
the user. In ESATAN-TMS r2 the Converter now accepts a tolerance that is used to
check the planarity of the Quad elements; if a FE Quad element is outside the
specified tolerance, the element is automatically translated into two triangular shells
within the generated ESATAN-TMS model. This simple but effective change leads to
a much cleaner and more usable ESATAN-TMS model.

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2.3 Maintenance & Minor Enhancements
2.3.1 Improved Handling of Large Models
Further effort was directed at updating components of ESATAN-TMS with both the
aim of improving performance and to centralise the data in line with our vision of an
integrated thermal modelling environment. After completing work on the geometry
processing in ESATAN-TMS r1 we have now redesigned the radiative data store and
the way in which the data is processed during the analysis file creation. The result is
that the associated HDF data files and the memory used during creation of the
ESATAN file is significantly reduced whilst improving the performance of both the
radiative calculation and the analysis file output.

2.3.2 Geometric Tolerances


To provide more control over geometry creation and to avoid repeated warning, 3 new
real variables have been introduced, POINT_COINCIDENCE, POINT_COLLINEAR
and POINT_WARNING.
The POINT_COINCIDENCE variable is used to control against duplicate points and
is currently used within the quadrilateral and rectangle shell definitions. The
POINT_COINCIDENCE value determines a distance threshold that helps
differentiate between “separate” points; the default value for this parameter is 1.0E-
8m. The POINT_COLLINEAR variable is a distance threshold value that is used to
determine if a set of 3 points is collinear or not. The default value is 1.0E-4m. Finally,

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the POINT_WARNING variable allows user control of the display of warning
messages that may arise from non co-planar or non-orthogonal shell points. The value
of this variable relates to the maximum permissible displacement that points can be
moved to achieve co-planarity or orthogonality. Only if Workbench has to move the
final shell point by a distance greater than the POINT_WARNING value will a
warning will be given. The default value for this parameter is 1.0E-4m.

2.3.3 ESATAN-TMS Thermal Improvements


In response to requests from customers, the format of the real data output to the CSV
file by the output routine PRNCSV has been changed to store the full double precision
value (Fortran format 1PE22.15).
To facilitate the definition of groups within the ESATAN model, the allowable line
length for a character user constant has been increased from 80 to 132. Group
information is automatically generated within the ESATAN model from the groups
defined within the Workbench, see also section 2.1. These are generated as character
user constants are therefore further references to these groups can be added within
calls to any ESATAN library routine requiring a list of nodes (ZLABEL).

2.4 Problem Fixes


2.4.1 ESATAN-TMS Workbench
1. When ray-tracing highly irregular meshed quadrilaterals, an approximation of the
face area is used which could lead to small inaccuracies within REF results.
2. When generating the thermal model through Workbench, the Analysis Case does
not set the Property Environment according to the Radiative Case and therefore
the optical properties used are taken from either the previously open Radiative
Case or from the default set.
3. Workbench fails if either the Source or Destination fields of a User-defined
Conductor are defined incorrectly as a real value (should be defined as a valid
group, shell side, face or node reference).
4. For a specific model configuration, executing a Radiative Case followed by the
definition and execution of a new Radiative Case, can lead to an unexpected
application exit.

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5. The initial temperature overlay does not indicate when a node has multiple
boundary conditions specified. The nodes value is displayed for one of the
boundary conditions.

2.4.2 ESATAN-TMS Thermal


1. Library routines PRTGRP/GRPMIN/GRPMAX/GRPAVE/GRPSUM do not
handle the case where the node reference (ZLABEL) contains a submodel
reference.
2. In certain cases multiple calls to the steady state solver SOLVFM can lead to an
error and the solution incorrectly halting with an incorrect message.
3. For large models (or models containing a large amount of array data) the Fortran
generation fails silently for large model (seen on Windows only).
4. On some models, a parametric case fails with a memory error after the run of the
nominal case.

2.5 Points To Note


1. On specifying the Analysis Case, the ability to include or exclude nodes when
defining a minimum GR value output to the ESATAN file has been removed. For
backward compatibility of language files, these optional parameters to the
GENERATE_ANALYSIS_FILE command are ignored and a warning message
issued.
2. An improvement in the accuracy of the ray-tracing of quadrilateral shells has been
implemented and, for highly irregular meshed quadrilaterals, small differences in
the REF results may be seen.
3. ESATAN-TMS r2 will be the last version supported on HP-UX 11.00 and Sun
Solaris 8 platforms. If there is specific requirement for these platforms, please do
not hesitate to contact us.

3 Importing Models into ESATAN-TMS Workbench


3.1 Upgrading Models From Previous Versions
ESATAN-TMS Workbench provides a smooth upgrade path for existing ESARAD
6.2 and ESATAN-TMS r1 models. On opening the model, Workbench checks the
model version number and, if a model from a previous version is detected, the option
is given to automatically update the model. Note that that is a permanent update of the
database and therefore after the update the model will not open in the previous
version. It is therefore recommended that a copy of the model be taken prior to the
update.

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3.2 Importing ESATAN Thermal Models into ESATAN-TMS
Workbench
ESATAN-TMS Workbench is now the interface to the complete thermal analysis
process and includes the launching of ThermNV and ESATAN. Our PC users of
ESATAN will therefore move from running ESATAN through the PcESATAN
interface to ESATAN-TMS Workbench. To simplify the process of bringing existing
PcESATAN models into Workbench a “PcESATAN Model Directory Import” utility
has been added to the Utilities menu. This utility is aimed at existing PcESATAN
users where the PcESATAN model directory contains separate folders, each
representing a single model. The utility loads all folders contained within the
specified directory, treating each folder as a separate model. A similar utility
“ESATAN Model Import” is provided which imports from a directory containing a
single ESATAN model. Both of these utilities are available on Windows, Linux and
UNIX platforms. Note that the directory names are used to create the Workbench
model name and therefore the directory name must comply with the Workbench
model naming rules (Alphanumeric plus the underscore character). On import, if the
characters dollar “$”, hash “#”, hyphen “-“ or space are contained in the directory
name, these are automatically converted to an underscore in the generated Workbench
model name. An error on import will occur if the directory name contains any other
unsupported characters.
The following provides a step-by-step guide to importing models into the Workbench
framework.
i Select the “PcESATAN Model Directory Import” utility from the Utilities
menu.

ii Enter in the “PcESATAN Model Directory” field the path to the


PcESATAN model directory. It is assumed that each folder within the
specified directory contains a single ESATAN model. Each folder within the
specified “PcESATAN Model Directory” is copied into the ESATAN-TMS
Workbench framework as a separate model. The name of the model is taken
to be the name of the folder.

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iii It is preferable to unselect the New Process check box to see the output of
the import utility.
After running the utility an imported model can be opened using the Model=>Open
menu. For each imported model a default analysis case is created named acase01. If
the file extension “.d” is used for the ESATAN input file, the import utility will
automatically detect this file and define this as the analysis file (if there is more than
one file with the extension “.d” then the first file will be assigned as the analysis file).
All files contained within the imported folder are copied into Workbench and are
shown on the model tree.

4 Contact Information
If you experience any difficulty with the installation, please do not hesitate to contact
ESATAN-TMS support at:

ESATAN-TMS User Support


ITP Engines UK Ltd.
Whittle Estate
Cambridge Road, Whetstone
Leicester LE8 6LH
United Kingdom

web: www.esatan-tms.com
e-mail: support@esatan-tms.com

ESATAN is a trademark of ITP Engines UK Ltd.

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