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Updates and Latest Enhancements
(August 16, 2011) Ater nearly an year of development and beta testing, we have released AMPS 6.6 version. This latest release is aiming at speeding up the first time user acceptance, and to privide the existing users an intuitive, unified interface and new features so they can quickly perfrom the "what if" analysis with ease. The latest version takes advantage of the latest multi-core multi-CPU systems using an advanced lock-free multi-thread pool design, and works well with the latest Windows kernel. To obtain the latest update, please contact us or your local distributor. If you have a support maintenance agreement, please login to download the latest update. Below are some key update details.

Following are the latest update history of AMPS product:

AMPS 6.6 Release 8/16/11

1) AMPS 6.6 incorporates the new breakthrough Sefea™ (Strain-Enriched
Finite Element Analysis) technology based on our long term commitment to
FEA R&D.  Sefea™ technology is the result of the latest Enriched FEA
researches with the goal of providing accurate results using low order
tetra elements that can be reliably generated for general and complex
models.  Most FEM products advise using the hexahedron or 2nd order
tetra elements to achieve satisfactory results, AMPS 6.6 with Sefea™
uses automatically generates low-order tetrahedron elements (or
triangular elements in 2D/Shell) and delivers more accurate solutions
than brick-element models while using far fewer elements.  It is also
insensitive to mesh distortion, and with high convergence rate.

2) A new Sefea shell has been implemented and is now the default
formulation when triangle shell elements are used.  The new enriched
Sefea shell element achieves the same accuracy as the quadrilateral
shell element and the 2nd order family shells.

3) For Condition>Point Force/Source an option a 'Total Sum' checkbox has
been added.  If this is checked, the force entered represents the total
force and not the force per node.  Similarly for the Global
Pressure/Traction and Flux BCs, a 'Total Integrated' checkbox has been
added.  If this is checked, then the entered values represent the total
force (etc.) applied on the selected surfaces and not the force (etc.)
per area.

4) A faster graphic layer has been implemented in the 6.6 release, and
this is especially good for showing transparency so the user can examine
the inner parts of the model with result contouring.  The transparency
contour animation speed is as fast as the regular display without dealy,
and it provides a fast and convenient post-processing environment for
hidden parts of the model.

5) For large assembly model with many parts, the mesh generation process
is completely automatic such that it will, by default, preserve all
material boundary while either generate consistent mesh across material,
or generate separate meshes for contact/gluing analysis.

AMPS 6.5.9 Release 10/15/10

1) Automatic Contact/Impact Analysis enhanced to provide better visual
feedback.  Analytical geometry, such as plane or line, is now shown
together with the finite element models.  Additional refinement for
checking the initial contacting parts have been added.

2) For machine with multiple cores, we have implemented a new lock-free
thread task controls without using Windows' kernel locking mechanism.
By directly integrating the finite element process threading controls
with this near lock-free design, we can be much more efficient than the
generic system thread critical section locking/unlocking.  This is most
helpful for multiple-core CPU's that share the same memory bus.

3) When there are non-regular Boolean operations during the meshing (the
default setting to glue separate solids into one before meshing), the
internal faces and edges are now written out separately for the element
face/edge contributed from each solid.  This is different from the
previous version that writes the all element faces/edges forming the
internal face/edge.

AMPS 6.5.1 Release 05/31/10

1) The default mid-side node coordinates for the second-order Lagrangian
family element are now linearly interpolated from corner nodes, rather
than based on the surface/edge projection that can be activated as an
advanced meshing option.

2) The thermal expansion reference temperature setting is now active.
Previously it was always default to zero.

3) Fix a time scaling problem for the acceleration and centrifugal
loading.  The time scaling was turned off since version 6.0, and the
system is subjected to full scaling.

4) Enable the user defined nodal mass input in component form.  The
lumped mass can be used in dynamic, modal, or frequency domain analysis.

AMPS 6.5 Release 04/06/10

1) A new unified interface has been implemented for AMpsolid and
Ampview.

2) A updated general hyperelastic material is now available for support
of general 2 to 9 parameter polynomial hyperelastic function.  The
coefficients can be fitted from the stress-strain curve using the
built-in curve fitting tool.

3) The Hyperelastic Foam Constitutive Behavior has been added. and the
Hyperelastic Rubber Constitutive Behavior replaces the previous Mooney
Rivlin.  This formulation supports the 2, 5 or 9 parameter versions of
the Mooney Rivlin model for hyperelastic rubber.

4) A new result summation tool has been added to support general result
summation against time/step in " Result>Plot Selected Nodes".  This
option now includes a checkbox for Time/Step plots so that the selected
nodes are summed in the Time/Step plot.

5) Fix a element based face selection problem in boundary condition
geometry.  When it is un-selected from the current geometry set, the
highlight remain on rather than changing into regular mesh color.

6) Added a new damping control for contact/impact analysis for high
frequency contact control.  Material Sheet>Stress changes (version
6.0.2)

7) Hyperelastic Rubber Fitting.  A dialog has been added to allow the
user to obtain the Hyperelastic coefficients by fitting experimental
data.  The experimental data should be an ASCII (readable by notepad)
file of stress and strain pairs separated by commas.

8) Solid View icon The Model View (AMPSolid) and FEA View (AMPView) of a
model are now linked so that clicking the Solid View icon (in the FEA
view) or the FEA/Mesh View icon (in the Solid View) allow quick access
to the other view.  The camera position is preserved when changing
programs using these icons so that the screen displays the same
orientation of the model after the view is changed.

9) Middle Mouse Buttons for dynamic camera changes Dragging the mouse
with the middle mouse button down (on modern mice, this corresponds to
pressing the mouse wheel down like a button and moving the mouse) cause
the camera to orbit the model.  If the Shift key is held down, the
camera pans across the model.  If the Control key is held down, the
camera zooms in and out as the mouse dragged up and down.

10) Contour Type>Format The "C-Style" format option was replaced by the
"Generic" option on the Format Selection display.  This prevents a
program crash when the user insists on entering garbage into the format
field.  The Pre-Text and Post-Text options have been added so the users
can add units or other text to the contour format.

11) Contour Type>Legend The location and height of the contour can be
changed.  If desired, the new values can be saved as the defaults for
the contour legend when AMPView is started.

12) Solid View icon The Solid View icon is used when AMPView is started
from AMPSolid and paired with that AMPSolid program.  In this case,
users can easily switch between programs by selecting the Solid View or
the FEA View icon at the left of the top toolbar.

13) Other Changes
For Explicit and Damage models, hidden elements are preserved (by
numbers only) when the load case changes.

AMPS 6.02 Updated 10/20/09

1) For Windows 7 and Windows Vista users, administrative privileges are
needed to write the configuration controls to the Windows root
directory.  Also, to switch the license manager to be USB based, you
need to right click on AMPSLicUSB.exe and select ‘Run as Administrator’
so that Windows 7 or Vista will record the change.

2) The latest update requires a new VC2005 runtime update.  It will be
automatically installed if installed from the installation process.  If
you only update the individual module (such as 64-bit installation),
please download the software update vcredist_x86.exe or vcredist_x64.exe
for the corresponding 32-bit or the 64-bit update.  You can find both
update from Microsoft's website, or from AMPS Tech's software update.

3) For damage analysis, AMPView now keeps hidden elements hidden during
step animation and when the step is changed.

4) The solver now correctly displays the number of threads used during
the solution stage, rather than display single thread tasks even though
it is fully utilizing the multi-core/multi-CPU.  It will also solve more
efficiently for linear elastic problems without going into unnecessary
solution iteration.

5) There is a new tetrahedron and triangular element formulation (b-bar
option).  This is a smoothed FEM element that will produce high
accuracy.  For this preliminary implementation, you should verify any
b-bar results by comparing them to the results without the b-bar option.

AMPS 6.0 Release 8/18/09

Boundary Conditions – No more separate indexes for Geometry, Time, Type,
Value:

Each Boundary Condition has Geometry, Type, Value and Time parts that
are only part of that boundary condition.  The Geometry, Type, Value or
Time associated with a Boundary Condition are only associated with that
one Boundary Condition.  To create a new condition (with default
values), select the geometry for the condition and then click New using
selected on the Condition page of the Condition Sheet.  This allows you
to chose the type from a dialog and opens the Value page for that type
so that the default values can be changed.  After changing the default
values, click Update on the value page to save the new values.

Expanded Time value options and Graphs of Time-Factor curve:

The Condition Sheet>Time page displays a graph of the time function for
the current system time.  Clicking Change Type brings up the Time
Dependency Entry dialog.  AMPS now supports Step and Sine option for
time dependency along with the Initial Value and Piecewise-Linear
options that were previously supported.

Boundary Conditions Symbols – defaults to fewer larger symbols:

The default for displaying Boundary Condition symbols now displays
symbols at up to 6 locations per boundary condition (max/min x, y and
z).  The larger symbols are easier to see for models with a fine mesh.
An option to Show on all nodes is available to display smaller (mesh
size dependent) symbols at each affected node or face.

Boundary Conditions Symbols – displayed by default, display icon:

The boundary condition symbols are now displayed when a model is opened.
The display of the BC symbols is now controlled by the Display BC
Symbols icon on the display toolbar.  When the Condition Sheet is open,
only BC Symbols for the current BC are displayed.  When the Condition
Sheet is closed, BC Symbols for all boundary conditions are displayed.

Conversion of old Dat and AMD files to 6.0 format:

The new .AMD file format is not compatible with previous AMPSol and
AMPView programs.  Old files (.dat and .amd) from these older programs
are converted to the new format when they are loaded into AMPView.
(Boundary condition sets are converted into the new Boundary Condition
format with unique Geometry, Type, Value and Time parts).  If you try to
analyze (File>Analyze Model) an AMD file that has not yet been saved in
the new format, you are given a chance to save the file before analysis
or cancel the analysis.

Disabling Boundary Conditions – two new ways:

The Condition Sheet>Condition page has a Disable Condition checkbox that
can be used to temporarily disable a boundary condition.  This is useful
if you want to run an analysis without one (or several) of the current
boundary conditions, but still want to keep the conditions in the file.

The Condition Sheet>Advanced page has an Apply BC only if Active Time
non-zero checkbox.  If this is checked, the boundary condition is active
when the active time factor is non-zero and not active then the active
time factor is zero.  The Change Active Time button allows the
Time-Active Time Factor curve to be independently specified for each
condition.  If the Apply BC only if Active Time non-zero is not checked,
the BC is active all the time.

View the direction of the largest principal stress at each node:

The new Results>Vector Display>Line Display of Largest Principal Stress
menu item can be used to display a line in the direction of the largest
principal stress at each node.  The length of the line is proportional
to the magnitude of the stress.  The color of the direction line
indicates the value of the stress.  If both compression and tension
occurs in a model, the red lines indicate maximum tension and the blue
lines indicate maximum compression.

Dynamic Frequency Analysis:

Dynamic Frequency Domain/High Freq Analysis is available on the
Model>System Control sheet.  For this mode of analysis, the time dialog
allows a phase to be specified for each boundary condition.  Applying
two perpendicular displacements of the same magnitude with a 90 degrees
phase difference applies a circular displacement to the model.  The
displacement animation of the Dynamic Frequency Analysis results
displays a full cycle of displacement including phase information.

Large deformation small rotation option

This newly added option allows in the UL formulation to neglect the
rigid body rotational matrix correction.  This correction is typically
small if the rotation between successive non-linear steps is small and
ignoring the correction slightly increases the computation speed.  On
some models with very nonlinear behavior or multiple solutions, turning
on Small Rotation Approximation will improve the numerical convergence
by slightly smoothing these near singularity calculations.

STEP translator has been added

In AMPSolid, the STEP import/export features are now active for
exchanging data from other CAD package.

Restart Analysis Feature

The restart analysis feature is now correctly restoring all previous
analysis step.  AMPView "restart analysis" checkbox now also record the
restart command properly.

AMPS 5.2 Updated 1/26/09

Boundary Conditions – Symbol Display

Symbols are displayed for the physics related (not General) boundary
conditions.  Users can specify whether or not None of the symbols are
displayed, the symbols are displayed for the Current condition or
symbols are displayed for All the conditions.  If symbols are displayed
for All conditions, the symbols remain on the model after the Condition
Sheet is closed.

Nodal Local Coordinate System Dialog

This dialog has been redesigned to provide clearer information to the
user.  The pull-down describes the type of coordinate system and the
sign of the vector components used to define the coordinate system.
Only the a,b,c definitions for the currently specified Local Coordinate
System are displayed.  Selection details for advanced users have been
moved to the bottom of the dialog.

Surface Pressure:

A refined pressure calculation is implemented to follow the curvature of
the element surface variation much better in higher-order elements.  The
updated method follows the element surface polynomial order, and use
higher order integration method accordingly.

AMPSolid:

Fix a problem when assembly parts are not touching each other, and these
parts were assigned to the same material attribute, rather than the
preferred separate material ID..

AMPS 5.1 Updated 10/10/08

1) For radiation view effect heat transfer analysis, for those faces
that are completely hidden from other faces, they are removed from the
radiation heat transfer calculation rather than radiating to the ambient
temperature.

2) A new equivalent strain item is now available as the run-time
variable for nonlinear dependency choice.

3) A new environment variable AMPS_MTHREAD_WAIT is now available to
change the default multithread thread pool timing.  On some multi-core
CPU, when the memory bus is shared and the each CPU core's access is not
as fast, the user can set the multithread wait timing (in milliseconds)
to allow a smoother computation.

AMPS 5.0 Update 07/01/08

Binary Output Files:

A Binary output files (.oub) is used instead of the ascii (.out, .eou)
files.  By selectively loading only the necessary part of the binary
file, AMPView exhibits a significant performance improvement when
loading the results from the processor.  Also, the binary files allow
models with significantly more output steps to be viewed in AMPView –
even on the 32 bit version of AMPView.

Damage and Explicit analysis now create a single model.oub file instead
of a model##.out file and model##.fe file for each time/step.

User Results:

Results>User Results>User defined result type and Results>User
Results>User Normal/Shear by direction have been significantly enhanced:
1) User results specifications are saved with the AMPView save command.
2) User results are available for Explicit, and Damage. 3) User results
can be used when monitoring running analysis and are available for new
steps as soon as the new steps are available. 4) An improved User
defined result type dialog uses pull-down to select previous user
results to display expression or to delete.

Read Latest Results:

Read Latest Result is active if a more recent version of the output file
is available.  This is useful when monitoring a multi-step problem.
Results can be updated as each additional step is available.

When the Read Latest Result button is pressed, the latest results are
loaded, the last time/step is displayed and default scaling (1 for
normal analysis, Automatic for modal results) is applied.

When an existing file with results is loaded, the Read Latest Results is
active.  This allows the user to quickly view the scaled latest step.

Results>Select Time/Step/Mode:

New shortcut buttons have been added to quickly go to the first, middle
or last step.

If scaling, contour, vectors and streamlines are active, they are
updated when the step changes or Step Animation is used.

Results Toolbar:

Next and Previous step/mode buttons have been added.  Now you can
quickly and easily view the next or previous step.
Scale toggle button has been added to quickly turn on or off the
displacement.

Streamline button is now a toggle button to turn streamlines on or off.
The Result>Streamline Options.. command can be used to change streamline
options.

New Step Animation:

The Step Animation Control now includes options to restrict the range of
the animation.  Full Range can be checked, or Start/End values can be
used.

When the play button (|>) is pressed, any pending changes on the dialog
are applied.

If Contour Display>Automatic is active then the contour range changes
between timesteps to display the minimum and maximum values.  This
allows users to use animation to check for the highest output values.
Users can select the timestep that displays the range they want and turn
off Contour Display>Automatic to use the same scale for all animation
steps.

When paused, the new step animation uses significantly less computer CPU
cycles than the previous Step Animation method.

File Step Animation:

File step animation can be used for any model.  Previously it was used
only for Damage or Explicit models.  For large models that are slow to
display, this option allows the animated frames to be save as .BMP files
along with a .ABMP file that contains timestep information.  The saved
.BMP files can be animated at a much faster frame rate than the original
large models.

Explicit and Damage models now default to normal step animation (instead
of File Step Animation).

File Step Animations can be created using the Create AVI button on the
normal Step Animation dialog or the Results>Animations>Step Animate to
File option.

Step Animation for Damage and Explicit Models:

Both Damage and Explicit now default to normal step animation instead of
File Step Animation.  For models that display rapidly, normal Step
Animation allows the user to use rotate, zoom and pause to stop the
animation at any time.  For any large model that display different steps
too slowly for the normal animation to be effective, the Create AVI
button on the Step Animation Control can be used to create a File Step
Animation (BMP files or an AVI file) that can be played back quickly.
The Results>Animations>Step Animate to File option can be used to
directly create a file animation.

Displacement Animation:

The Displacement (changing Scale) Animation has been rewritten to use
significantly less CPU cycles during animation and pause.  Also the >
(and <) options increase (or decrease) the scale until the maximum scale
is reached.  The labels for Half and Full Sine have been changed to
Positive Half and Full Cycle since a linear cycle is used and not a Sine
cycle.

Change Views (Iso, XY, XZ, YZ):

Unless Options>Enclose Changed view is set, changing the view does not
change the zoom.  This makes changing view similar to the rotate command
that doesn't change the zoom.  Similar to the rotate command, you may
have to use the drag command after the first view change to fully
specify the center of the model so that changing views leaves the
desired center unchanged.  This is also useful after a rotate command if
you want to re-align the model without changing the zoom.

Time/Step 0:

Multi-step models now include time/step zero which shows the initial
model with no displacement.  This allows step animations to start with
the initial step instead of the first displaced step.  It also allows
history plots of node values to display the initial value.

AMPS ASCII input extension is .AMD:

To reduce confusion caused by other software that uses files with the
.DAT extension, the AMPS ASCII input extension has been changed from
.DAT to .AMD.  The format has not been changed and users are free to
change the file extension of an existing .DAT extension to .AMD.  The
Files>Open menu shows both .DAT and .AMD files.  If a .DAT file is
selected, it is renamed to have a .AMD extension before being loaded by
AMPView.

Automatic Contact:

AMPSol now processes the second order elements in contact analysis with
a more smooth result.  Also, a more refined automatic contact stiffness
used in the penalty formulation is used so it will handles a much wider
variety of different contact problems before any user manual control is
needed.

For technical support, please contact support@ampstech.com or visit our
website at http://www.ampstech.com.