Using recently released software from both companies (ABAQUS 6.5 and FLUENT 6.2), the new FSI capability fills a gap in the market by enabling users to solve complex multidisciplinary design problems involving coupled fluid flow and structural phenomena using leading technologies from their respective domains and backed by the two most highly respected support teams in the industry.

"Fluid-structure interaction effects are present in many of our customers’ most challenging design problems, and the new FSI capability allows us to engage with those customers to develop robust and reliable modeling approaches," notes Paul Bemis, Fluent's Vice President of Marketing. "We believe that this innovative coupling of best-in-class engineering simulation software is a significant milestone in the quest for an engineering capability that solves real-world FSI problems within industrially realistic timescales."

"Integration with other analysis disciplines is increasingly of interest to our customers," says Ken Short, Vice President of Marketing at ABAQUS Inc. "The open standard approach to coupling that we have adopted here allows us and our customers to focus on best-in-class tools within the structural analysis domain, while providing solutions that address a very wide range of fluid-structure interaction physics. We are very enthusiastic to be working with Fluent to provide a tested and reliable combined modeling capability."

The full set of modeling capabilities in FLUENT 6.2 and ABAQUS 6.5 (including both ABAQUS/Standard and ABAQUS/Explicit structural analysis products) is available for use in coupled FSI simulations. This technology combines the benefits of full nonlinear structural simulation from both ABAQUS products with the unique dynamic meshing capability in FLUENT to account for the effect of structural motion or deformation on the fluid domain.