Altair Partner Alliance Welcomes SEAM and Deepens its NVH Capabilities

“Cambridge Collaborative is excited to have the opportunity to partner with Altair,” said Stephen Manning, product manager for SEAM. “With both companies having more than 20 years experience in software development, we will have a tremendous amount of knowledge and energy to contribute in an effort to provide better NVH solutions to the product engineering world.”

Originally developed to study structure-borne noise in submarines in 1980, SEAM has grown to be accepted as an analysis procedure by automobile manufacturers and suppliers, major shipyards, Navy research establishments and aerospace companies. It is used to predict interior noise and vibration in automobiles, aircraft and construction equipment cabs, as well as the radiated noise from ships and the vibroacoustic environments for spacecraft. Other applications include machinery and industrial noise, as well as building acoustics.

SEAM analyzes a complex dynamic system by dividing it into a set of substructures and acoustic elements. These are then grouped into the appropriate modes and SEA subsystems, keeping the flow of energy between them proportional to the modal energies and coupling factors. All coupling factors and power balances for each subsystem are calculated by SEAM. This results in equations that are solved for the modal energy and response of each subsystem.

“We are delighted to be able to offer SEAM to our HyperWorks customers through the Altair Partner Alliance,” said Jianmin Guan, Altair’s senior program manager for noise, vibration and harshness. “SEAM brings exceptional capabilities that have made it a standard solution in a number of industries for mid-to-high-frequency vibro-acoustic analysis, and it complements Altair’s existing FEA-, BEA- and EFEA- based NVH offerings in meeting our customers’ needs of full-frequency NVH simulations.”

SEAM, using the industry’s leading SEA solver speed, is able to produce results to help answer many different problems. It has the ability to create multiple acoustic radiation models with unique formulations specific to aerospace panels and fuselage sections. It is also capable of developing models with thousands of SEA subsystems to incorporate both predicted and measured stiffening and pressurization effects into hybrid SEA models. SEAM performs fast and automated model updates with parametric modeling using symbolic constants and algebraic equations, as well as possesses many other beneficial capabilities.

Available for the last twelve years, Altair’s innovative unit-based licensing system allows HyperWorks users customizable access to a growing portfolio of applications while optimizing their return on investment with each new partner added. From that point on, every license has been composed of a pool of recyclable HyperWorks units, which can be used to access any application within the HyperWorks family.

After witnessing this original licensing model’s success, Altair has offered the opportunity for third-party companies to run their own applications under this unit-based system, a collaboration known as the Altair Partner Alliance. The overall flexibility of these HWUs empowers users and allows them access to the largest and most complete suite of CAE applications available, making the benefits to participating HyperWorks customers infinite. The ROI increases for users each time a new application is added to the offering, since any of the partner programs can be accessed using the same leased HWUs they are already using to run HyperWorks. This makes over 50 additional applications available at no incremental cost or long-term commitment.