nCode DesignLife

Highlights of recent releases of nCode DesignLife are shown below, including links to webinars and request for a free trial.

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Introducing nCode 2025.1

The release of  nCode 2025.1 brings improvements in functionality and performance for nCode DesignLife, nCode GlyphWorks and nCode VibeSys software products. 

This latest version mainly focused on customer requested enhancements, minor bug fixes and component updates for improved security that continue to deliver data-driven confidence through accurate analysis, CAE simulation and several customer-led enhancements such as:

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nCode Designlife 2025.1 release screenshot 1

Extended safety factor analysis

The Safety Factor analysis engine now supports multi-temperature analysis using the SN Temperature Curve, enhancing its ability to model fatigue under varying thermal conditions. We have also extended the use of scaled normal stress within a critical plane calculation to both SN and safety factor multi-temperature analyses. This approach is based on the ratio of principal stresses and the material’s tensile and shear fatigue limits, providing a more robust and realistic fatigue assessment.

Seam weld analysis improvements

Enhancements have been made to Seam Weld analyses;
- A new option (SeamWeldSide) is now available for the same weld solution location which identifies the physical side of the weld where damage is calculated and can be displayed using the OutputSeamWeldSide property.
- The solid seam weld auto method (SolidWeldAuto = True) has been optimised to skip individual locations with complex geometries to greatly speed up the analysis and prevent job failure.

nCode Designlife 2025.1 release screenshot 2

Updated FE results support

Latest supported FE results files include:
- Ansys .rst 2025 R2
- Abaqus .odb 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
- MSC.Nastran .op2 2024.1
- Altair Optistruct .op2 and .h3d 2024.0

➡️Current customers on active software maintenance can gain access to nCode 2025.1 and its full release documentation using the Support Portal

Release Updates

The release of  nCode 2025.0 brings improvements in functionality and performance for nCode DesignLife, nCode GlyphWorks and nCode VibeSys  software products. 

This latest version mainly focused on customer requested enhancements, minor bug fixes and component updates for improved security that continue to deliver data-driven confidence

Watch the recorded webinar ondemand_video

Try nCode 2025.0 today fact_check

Expanded Premium Materials Database for Advanced Analysis

Significant additions to the Premium Materials Database, generated under a Small Business Innovation Research contract funded by the United States Air Force. Data rights are owned by Select Engineering Services (SES), located in Utah USA. The data was generated to investigate the effect of different heat treatments and surface finishes on the following materials:

300M Steel (20 entries)

4340 Steel (4 entries)

7075-T7351 Aluminium Alloy (6 entries)

Beta Release of Faster FE Translation for Improved Efficiency

New FE translation option is provided as a beta release. Reading data from FE results files can be a significant proportion of the total analysis time, and this release provides some translation speed increases and will continue to be developed during 2025. Improvements are achieved by better use of multiple translation processes for small numbers of loadcases.

For example, for a 3 million element model with a single load case using the default 4 translation processes, the speed of translation is over 4 times faster.

Latest supported FE results files include:

Ansys .rst 2025 R1
Abaqus .odb 2022, 2023, 2024
MSC.Nastran .op2 2024.1
Altair Optistruct .op2 and .h3d 2024.0

➡️Current customers on active software maintenance can gain access to nCode 2025.0 and its full release documentation using the Support Portal

Release Updates

The release of nCode 2024.1 brings improvements in functionality and performance for nCode DesignLife, nCode GlyphWorks, and nCode VibeSys software products encompassing 155 built-in processing and display glyphs and support for over 50 data formats. 

Current customers on active software maintenance can gain access to nCode 2024.1 and full release documentation using the Support Portal.

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Stress gradient correction

The effect of a notch in a finite element analysis will normally overpredict the fatigue damage. Typically, the fatigue strength reduction factor for a notch is always less then the elastic stress concentration factor. The stress gradient correction available in DesignLife allows the user to take account of this difference and thus give a much less conservative estimate of the fatigue damage.

The stress gradient correction is now available within a Vibration Fatigue analysis, therefore now allows for a more accurate calculation of the effect of localized stress concentrations when carrying out a frequency based analysis

Seam weld vibration fatigue analysis

Seam weld fatigue analysis based on vibration loads in DesignLife only previously supported frequency response results in the FE files. DesignLife now supports modal force results. This not only allows more efficient computation in the frequency domain, but it also allows users of most FE codes to use the recommended force method with the more efficient modal results.

Automatic Re-submission of Batch Jobs

Batch jobs can now be automatically re-submitted after a failure due to license availability. The new functionality is supported in both flowproc and the DesignLife specific dtproc. This feature is controlled by the use of two new command line switches that control the number of re-tries and the time period between the re-tries.

This was a beta feature at 2024.0 but is now fully supported.

Other enhancements:

Default number of parallel translation processes now increased to 4 for faster reading of FE results data.

Release Updates

The release of nCode 2024.0 brings improvements in functionality and performance for nCode DesignLife, nCode GlyphWorks, and nCode VibeSys software products encompassing 155 built-in processing and display glyphs and support for over 50 data formats. 

Current customers on active software maintenance can gain access to nCode 2024.0 and full release documentation using the Support Portal.

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Automatic Re-submission of Batch Jobs – Beta Feature

Weld Hot Spot with Shell Models

This method has been available for several years for solid element FE models and has now been extended to use with Shell models.
Weld hot spot extracts calculates stresses at the weld toe by the extrapolation of the stress in front of the weld from either 2 or 3 points. Weld toe locations and the extrapolation direction are defined in the same weld location file that is used in a solid seam weld analysis. The stresses calculated by this method can be used in the standard SN and Safety factor engines.

Extended Support for Repeated Entity IDs

More and more FE codes and pre-processors are supported either multiple parts that allow duplicate entity IDs or simple allowing the same IDs for different element types for example. DesignLife already supports repeated IDs for ABAQUS ODB file for example but now this support has been extended to ABAQUS, NASTRAN and Altair input decks, NASTRAN/Altair OP2 results files and Altair H3D results files.

Other enhancements

Support for multiple results cases in the ANSYS MCF file (modal coordinates).
Improved seam weld waning file (control over the precision of the position information).
Updated FE version support

o Dassault ABAQUS - now support FIL files and 5 versions of ODB directly (2019 – 2023)
o ANSYS 2024R1
o NX NASTRAN 2306
o Altair OP2 and H3D 2023

Release Updates

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New Line method for Critical Distance_16.9

Critical Distance ‘Line’ method

Two options are provided in DesignLife to account for notch sensitivity: Critical Distance and Stress Gradient. A new method named ‘Line’ has been added to the Critical Distance method. A new property, CriticalDistanceMethod is added for this purpose. Another property named NumberOfPoints defines the number of points to use for the Line method stress calculation. This method is considered to give a more accurate measure of the sub-surface stress at the critical distance.

Multiple event fatigue results to a single Abaqus ODB file

A new property named MultipleEventsSingleODB has been added to ‘PostProcessorExportODB’ Post Processor object and FEOutput Glyph, which when set to True will enable writing multiple duty cycle load provider events results to a single Dassault Abaqus ODB file format. This is more convenient for the customer and also can save significant disk space.

File format version enhancements:

Dassault Abaqus 2023 .ODB & .FIL
Ansys 2023 R2 .RST
FEMZIP-N 1.7.13

Release Updates

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Faster Analysis with 4 processing Threads

The number of threads included by default in DesignLife has been increased from 2 to 4.

This will give a up to doubling of the analysis speed before needing extra thread licenses.

The 4 processing threads are also available for the translation phase and can lead to a significant reduction in the translation phase of the overall process.

Further enhancements

Additional improvements in nCode 2023 include:

Overall spectrum available as a specific option in the ComplexFrequencyManipulation glyph
MATLAB MAT file format supported up to version 7.3
Time series can be saved in the MDF 4 file format
CSV files now readable directly as Time Series
New vibration fatigue glyphs available for EN, spot weld and seam weld analyses
New worked example for vibration loading with modal coordinates
Seven new materials in the premium material database
Three new FKM material databases (5th, 6th and 7th editions of the FKM Guide

Cyber essentials - certificate of assurance

We are certified Cyber Essentials Plus (CEP)

CEP is a UK Government backed industry supported scheme. It helps us to address the required cyber security standards we must meet for our customers. Certification demonstrates our commitment to cyber security.
Security vulnerabilities have been resolved in IT infrastructure, software applications and our own software products.
Process improvements have been made so that we do not accrue technical debt as new vulnerabilities emerge.

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nCode DesignLife

Introducing nCode 2025.1

Extended safety factor analysis

Seam weld analysis improvements

Updated FE results support

Release Updates

Expanded Premium Materials Database for Advanced Analysis

Beta Release of Faster FE Translation for Improved Efficiency

Release Updates

Stress gradient correction

Seam weld vibration fatigue analysis

Automatic Re-submission of Batch Jobs

Other enhancements:

Release Updates

Automatic Re-submission of Batch Jobs – Beta Feature

Weld Hot Spot with Shell Models

Extended Support for Repeated Entity IDs

Other enhancements

Release Updates

Critical Distance ‘Line’ method

Multiple event fatigue results to a single Abaqus ODB file

Release Updates

Faster Analysis with 4 processing Threads

Further enhancements

We are certified Cyber Essentials Plus (CEP)

Ready to achieve success through failure prediction?

Request a Trial

Request a Quote

Get Training

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