SesamX Manifesto and development roadmap

Get to know what is behind SesamX and discover our roadmap for the incoming months

This manifesto is the opportunity for us to expose our vision of what SesamX will be in the near future. It discusses some of its core features as well as explains the main motivation behind our action. A concise roadmap is given at the end to provide a clear view of how the development of SesamX will go on.

What is SesamX?

SesamX is a finite element analysis software that addresses the physical simulation of structural products. It allows engineers that use it to efficiently predict the behaviors of products they are designing.

SesamX will include every necessary feature to perform structural simulations such as:

  • Linear, non-linear and dynamics (implicit as well as explicit) solution procedures.

  • Various material laws such as isotropic, composite, elastoplasticity, hyperelasticity.

  • Contacts and follower loads.

  • And many others as the software becomes more mature.

SesamX database is addressed with object paradigm allowing easier manipulation of the models, their meshes, loads, solutions and so on. It is encoded with an open data format (HDF5) enabling easy manipulation even outside SesamX.

SesamX aims to be easily interfaced with existing pre and post-processing software via an API allowing direct creation, manipulation and execution of simulations on your model, without relying only on input cards.

With sub-structuring and parallelization as its core, SesamX will handle large models and large assemblies in an efficient manner. Enabling by the same efficient multiphysics coupling.

SesamX model does not depend on the solution procedure chosen: the user should not have to redefine every element in its model when going from linear to non-linear analysis, static to dynamics. The model is unified.

We will strive to keep SesamX input cards as simple as possible: there should not be multiple ways to reach the same desired behavior. One consequence comes from one cause.

To summarize, SesamX aims to make work-life of engineers simpler above all. Designing a product is a demanding task by itself which includes a lot of constraints and compromises. Unnecessary struggles with simulation software are time and mental energy lost from more valuable tasks.

For who?

SesamX typical user is the mechanical engineer. However, in a broader sense, SesamX aims to be used inside teams of engineers in industrial companies. Nowadays, analysis solvers need to be integrated with pre and post-processing software, as well as in-house software specific to each business to form an analysis software suite. This suite must answer efficiently the team needs. Making SesamX as easily interfaced as possible is the insurance to perfectly match your needs and integrate inside an existing software suite.

Academia and research world is welcome too.

Why are we doing this?

Finite element method has been around for more than 40 years and we believe it has a brilliant future. Computers and software development have evolved with time. With SesamX we want to leverage this leap in technology to craft a well designed modular and efficient software, resilient to future evolutions and using at its best the machine it runs on.

Furthermore, we want SesamX to showcase that it is possible to build a unified and complete finite element analysis software: to study the same model under different solution procedures, engineers should not have to switch between different software.

Engineers feedbacks are at the center of our strategy. We believe their demanding requests are a deep source of creativity and innovation.

These are our core believes. We are flabbergast by what existing software have done for 40 years and we want to contribute a step further. Our goal is to follow our intuition about what finite element software should be while trying to build the next generation analysis software.

Roadmap

As a guideline we are writing here the roadmap we plan to follow.

Development of the basic features needed to build a model:

  • Linear finite elements (bar, beam, membrane, shell and solid), and connector elements (MPC),

  • Usual boundary conditions and load types,

  • Linear static solver.

Development of implicit non-linear static and dynamic solvers and associated procedures:

  • Large displacement,

  • Follower load,

  • Plasticity,

  • Contact.

Consolidation of existing features and development of missing basic features:

  • Solution procedures (modal, frequency response, buckling, …),

  • Material laws (composite, hyperelasticity, …),

  • Missing features essential to our users,

  • Study and development of explicit dynamic procedures,

  • Study and development of multiphysics coupling.

We will try to publish a new release every 6 month.


Did you like this content?

Register to our newsletter and get notified of new articles