NAFEMS Americas and Digital Engineering (DE) teamed up (once again) to present CAASE, the (now Virtual) Conference on Advancing Analysis & Simulation in Engineering, on June 16-18, 2020!

CAASE20 brought together the leading visionaries, developers, and practitioners of CAE-related technologies in an open forum, unlike any other, to share experiences, discuss relevant trends, discover common themes, and explore future issues, including:
-What is the future for engineering analysis and simulation?
-Where will it lead us in the next decade?
-How can designers and engineers realize its full potential?
What are the business, technological, and human enablers that will take past successful developments to new levels in the next ten years?

Resource Abstract

The NASA Multiscale Analysis Tool (NAMSAT) serves as a state-of-the-art, “plug and play,” massively multiscale modeling (M^3) platform for hierarchical materials and structures. The development of NASMAT has focused on modularity, upgradability and maintainability, interoperability, and utility. The code has been designed such that the various functionalities are compartmentalized into a set of generic module types. Specific modules can be swapped in and out, as needed, to solve the multiscale problem of interest. Moreover, to support M^3, recursive data types and subroutines are used extensively to handle the large quantities of data associated with each length scale considered by the multiscale model. Finally, application program interfaces (APIs) have been developed to facilitate the integration of NASMAT into other programs (commercial, research, and user-defined) as well as the integration of other codes into NASMAT itself.



This presentation is intended to give an overview of the design of NASMAT and how the design supports modularity, upgradability and maintainability, interoperability, and utility. First, the software architecture and hierarchy will be explored. Each of the main program modules (Pre-processing, Driver, Engine, Solution, Homogenization, Material Model, Localization) and their “plug-and-play” interoperability will be discussed. Details on the recursive data structures, used to store specific types of data associated with the input file, fields, properties, microstructure, flags, micromechanics solution, and global solution, will be presented along with the identification of the recursive program modules needed to enable M^3. Benchmark results for NASMAT will be presented and compared to legacy code.



Information pertaining to the NASMAT APIs will also be presented. The MacroAPI serves to integrate NASMAT into other software; i.e., another code calls NASMAT. The most common use-case for this API is when the highest length scale structural analysis, in a multiscale model, is being performed using the finite element method. In such a case, the integration point material properties are obtained directly from NASMAT. NASMAT calculates these properties, through homogenization and localization procedures, which can include the effects of temperature dependent inelasticity, damage, and other non-linear phenomena. The MacroAPI will be demonstrated using third party FEM software to exhibit performance of the code when the FEM operations are distributed among multiple processors.



The MicroAPI is intended to interface third-party micromechanics codes into NASMAT. In these instances, the user provides code that performs the homogenization and localization operations. Because of the arbitrary length scale capability within NASMAT, there are no restrictions on the number of codes that can interface with NASMAT using the MicroAPI in a single analysis. The third-party micromechanics method can include its own local constitutive and damage models, or the method can utilize the models already implemented within NASMAT.