AnalySwift, LLC, a Utah company that provides efficient high-fidelity modeling software for composites and other advanced materials, recently announced that a versatile new preprocessor called PreVABS is now available to users of the powerful VABS composite blade simulation software. The VABS software is an engineering code for rigorous simulation of composite slender structures, especially helicopter and wind turbine rotor blades, and the new PreVABS greatly improves the user experience.
Students in the Multiscale Structural Mechanics (MSM) group at Purdue University developed the new PreVABS under the direction of Dr. Wenbin Yu, professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. PreVABS helps engineers in the early stages of simulation of composite slender structures, commonly called composite beams. It is designed to reduce the workload of preparing input files for VABS and to make the process automatic for design and optimization purposes.
“Cross sections with general and airfoil shapes can be created,” said Wenbin Yu, professor at Purdue University. “This replaces an earlier program, also called PreVABS, which had been discontinued and was no longer available. PreVABS is a completely new code, which has many improved capabilities. Unlike the previous program, PreVABS is now free and open source.” More…..