Firehole Products
Partner Products
"Firehole offers one of the most impressive and unique methods of composite evaluation we've seen - Helius:MCT™ - a product that lets us see exactly how composites perform under extreme loads. Tools like this allow us to maximize performance and optimize weight while still maintaining safety margins."
Mark Bishop
Senior Design Engineer
Farr Yacht Design
"A simple, robust and predictive simulation tool, able to accurately identify the failure and the post-failure behavior of general composite structure was an analyst's dream until now. The innovative Firehole multi-scale approach provides an outstanding value to our customers because of its proven effectiveness and sound physical basis."
Simone Ragionieri,
SmartCAE General Manager
"Helius:MCT provides a unique and powerful analysis toolset. The integration with ABAQUS is seamless and user-friendly. The increased resolution of material failure mechanisms results in the ability to more efficiently optimize composite structures."
Christopher T. Key
Applied Technologies Group,
Hi-Test Laboratories, Inc.
Products 
Intelligent Discrete Softening Method (IDS Method)
Enabling efficient, robust convergence for composite progressive failure
Implicit finite element codes often encounter severe difficulty in obtaining converged equilibrium solutions for progressive failure of composite materials. This convergence difficulty is primarily caused by the non-continuous (or discrete) softening behavior that composite materials exhibit as individual failure events accumulate within the composite microstructure – including material degradation, material failure and delamination.
General-purpose finite element codes are developed to handle a variety of material models, primarily continuous stiffening and softening schemes. Progressive failure of composite structures is generally not continuous as a small increase in load can create failure events in multiple elements in a single increment. General-purpose FE codes simply cannot provide robust solutions for structures that exhibit this type of material response. Until now, commercial codes have been of limited practical value because this methodology necessitates the use of excessively small load increments which results in unacceptably long run times, or outright convergence failure may prevent the simulation from being completed at all. In either case, progressive failure simulation is most often perceived as time consuming and frustrating.
Solution
In response to the lack of practical tools for progressive failure simulation, Firehole Composites has developed the Intelligent Discrete Softening Method (or IDS Method). Developed specifically for analysis of composite materials, this simulation technology offers two major advantages over previously available solutions:
- The IDS Method dramatically increases convergence robustness which permits the entire load history of a structure to be successfully simulated.
- The IDS Method alleviates the dependency on small load increments which permits the entire simulation to be completed using far fewer load increments, significantly reducing the overall run time.
The result is the ability to conduct full-scale structural analysis in a practical amount of time.
The IDS Method is exclusively available in both of Firehole Composites' progressive failure software modules: Helius:MCT™ and Helius:MCT Cohesive™.