“We have always been close to the academic community, where both the SwiftComp and VABS software programs originated,” said Allan Wood, president & CEO of AnalySwift. “Our Academic Partner Program honours that tradition and broadens university access to cutting edge simulation tools.”
“Engineering faculty and students can benefit greatly from the full versions of the programs,” said Dr Wenbin Yu, CTO of AnalySwift. “These are tools being used in industry to model complex, real composites including wind turbine and helicopter rotor blades, deployable space structures made from high strain composites (HSC), printed circuit boards (PCBs), and sporting goods such as fishing rods and golf clubs.”
Academic licenses of VABS and SwiftComp have always been available to universities for purchase, but the new program offers the licenses at no cost. The composite simulation programs are commonly used in aerospace and mechanical engineering programs, with emerging applications in other areas, such as civil engineering, medical devices, and life sciences.
Inaugural members of the Academic Partner Program include the University of British Columbia (Composites Research Network), Technical University of Munich (Institute of Helicopter Technology), and Carleton University (Rotorcraft Research Group).
PhD student Tobias Pflumm at Technical University of Munich stated, “Since 2014 VABS has become our method of choice for rotor-blade structural design and optimisation at our institute. With its help we have successfully designed, tested and manufactured the rotor blades of our Autonomous Rotorcraft for Extreme Altitudes (AREA). We are currently using VABS extensively within a multidisciplinary design environment to quantify uncertainties in the rotor blade design process."
According to Reza Sourki, PhD student in the School of Engineering at University of British Columbia: “SwiftComp is good for a quick approximation of a composite structure’s behaviour by capturing local stress/strain fields quickly.”
