This article describes the workflow for accessing ANSYS Mechanical APDL on NIMBIX platform. To access Mechanical APDL on NIMBIX, the following steps are required:
1. Select the desired ANSYS Mulitiphysics release from the Compute dashboard
If the option is not available in the first page menu, click “More” at the bottom of the page
2. A splash window will open. Select the Mechanical APDL option as shown below:
After clicking on Mechanical APDL button, the Mechanical APDL window opens, and you are ready to select the machine type, number of cores, etc.
3. Cloud set-up screen opens and here you must choose some of your settings by clicking on the tabs (General, Optional, etc) one tab at a time.
UNDER GENERAL TAB
1. Under Machine type when you click on the caret on the right, you can select the type of machine you want to run your job on. The decision on machine type selection is based on size and complexity of your model and cost associated with the machine type (some machines will have higher RAM, others will only run the job on single CPU, others will have better graphics and therefore higher cost, etc).
2. Select the number of cores:
The machine type you selected in the previous step, will dictate the increment in the number of cores that you can choose/select. For a very simple and small model, you can leave default selection, which in this case would be “4” or move the scroll bar to the desired number of cores or simply type over “4” the number of cores you wish to run your job on.
NOTE: Do not confuse number of cores with number of nodes (nodes represent the number of machines selected. In this example, we selected 1 node with 4 cores).
UNDER OPTIONAL TAB
1. Assign a Job Label (give a name that will help you keep track on your running jobs. For example, My_APDL_structure):
Leave blank the wall time limit and the IP address. The Window size needs to be kept as default.
UNDER STORAGE TAB
1. Select vault type: Default vault is “Elastic_File”
The “Elastic_File” vault is recommended for small to medium size jobs, such as Icepak projects, simple linear Mechanical Analysis projects, some HFSS and simple Fluent projects (not multi-phase). For any complex and computationally heavy jobs, and where partitioning the job over number of cores becomes challenging, the Performance_SSD vault is strongly recommended. The Performance_SSD vault can be found in the drop-down under “Select Vault” tab (NOTE: requires subscription and extra monthly payment to have access to Performance_SSD vault).
Before submitting your job for running, you can preview your settings under the PREVIEW SUBMISSION tab.
You can start your job by clicking on the SUBMIT button.
After Mechanical APDL has been successfully launched, select your simulation environment in the Product Launcher window, license type, and working directory (your “data” folder) in the Product Launcher window as shown below:
Set up the High Performance Computing Tab as shown below:
ANSYS on NIMBIX cloud allows the user to take advantage of the ANSYS HPC resources:
- Shared-memory parallel processing (shared-memory ANSYS)
- running across multiple cores on a single machine (a single compute node of the NIMBIX cluster). Shared-memory parallelism allows each core involved in the computation to share data as needed to perform the necessary parallel computations.
- - Distributed-memory parallel processing (Distributed ANSYS)
- running across multiple cores on a single machine (a single compute node of the NIMBIX cluster) or across multiple machines (the NIMBIX cluster). Distributed-memory parallelism allows each core to communicate data needed to perform the necessary parallel computations using the MPI (Message Passing Interface) software.
- GPU acceleration (a type of shared-memory parallel processing)
- uses the highly parallel architecture of the GPU hardware to accelerate the speed of solver computations.
- uses the highly parallel architecture of the GPU hardware to accelerate the speed of solver computations.
Press “Run” button at the bottom of the window to start the job.
BUILD AND RUN YOUR FINITE ELEMENT MODEL
Problem statement: Compute the stress and strain in a carbon steel cantilever beam with rolling support under uniformly distributed load/pressure:
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Select Analysis type (Preferences/Structural)
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Select Preprocessing Options
a. Element Type (SOLID185)
b. Material Properties (Linear Isotropic – Elastic modulus and Poisson ratio)
c. Create/Import geometry using Keypoints/Lines/Surfaces/Solids
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Mesh your model (In this case swept mesh with 0.005 m global size)
4. Select “Analysis type” in Solution option
5. Define your “Solution Controls” as desired (in this case, large deflection ON and user-controlled time stepping)
6. Apply loads and boundary conditions (cantilever beam with roller support under distributed surface pressure)
7. Solve the Current Load Step
To analyze the status of memory and CPU usage during your run, for small models, check your “Detailed Job Metrics”.
Larger models may take advantage and distribute the work over several nodes at close to 100% of CPU utilization (consider using more cores next time you have models that are complex or for complex CAD imported geometries, etc). For smaller models, use less cores and be efficient.
8. Plot Results from General Postproc option based on the desired data that you wish you obtain from your analysis (stress, strain, displacement contour plots for either nodal or element results)
9. Save your work and exit the software when finished (ensure the job is closed before closing your browser).