MSC Nastran 2024.2

New capabilities

MSC Nastran 2024.2 introduces powerful new features to enhance modelling accuracy and efficiency. The addition of automatic skinning for solid elements eliminates manual pre-processing work and enables faster data recovery, allowing users to quickly generate skinned surface results for large 3D FEM models and access and retrieve critical results faster. Global-local analysis now enables detailed analysis of localized regions without running the full model, saving both time and computational resources. Engineers can now share only the local model with third-party suppliers, keeping sensitive information about the entire model private.


MSC Nastran 2024.2 now supports acoustic grid participation results at the fluid grid interface. This makes the result files smaller and much faster to generate because of the single degree of freedom at the fluid points and the coarser mesh in the fluid domain.

In MSC Nastran 2024.2 we introduce the new optimization solver for topology optimization workflows in SOL 200. The new solver, Emendate, provides efficient, manufacturing-ready design solutions that are enabled for both linear and non-linear applications.


Performance and speed

The 2024.2 release offers significant performance improvements, helping users complete simulations more efficiently and reliably. Enhanced ACMS robustness and performance reduce computation times by up to 25% for large-scale modal analyses, while FastFR improvements enable frequency response runs up to 30% faster. The MUMPS solver, now available for static solutions in buckling analysis, enhances performance in cases with a smaller number of buckling modes. Together, these updates streamline workflows, optimize memory management, and increase solver stability, delivering faster solutions and supporting large, complex simulations more effectively.


Enhanced user experience

With a focus on user experience, MSC Nastran 2024.2 introduces features to improve usability and simplify workflows.

Multiple results output enables simultaneous exports of the same result type, avoiding multiple runs. For example, a user might want to output all element stresses to a results database file for a particular subcase using the command STRESS(PLOT)=ALL, while simultaneously printing or punching a subset of these stresses to the standard MSC Nastran output files (.f06 or .pch). A new flutter perturbation step in SOL 400 accounts for preloaded conditions, critical for accurate aerospace analysis. Additionally, an enhanced .log file consolidates detailed job insights into one location, streamlining troubleshooting and optimization. These features ensure a smoother, more efficient user experience, especially for complex engineering applications.


Usability and solution enhancements

MSC Nastran 2024.2 adds crucial usability and solution enhancements to improve modelling accuracy and expand application scope. Inertia relief support with external superelements when using INREL=-1 or -2 is introduced, broadening the range of supported cases in assembly models.

In MSC Nastran 2024.1 introduced cohesive elements with stiffness matrix support for linear solution sequences, allowing NVH analysis using the same cohesive modelling approach as in explicit crash simulations. In this release, mass matrix support is added to provide comprehensive modelling capabilities.

Mixed precision. hdf5 capabilities lift output file size restrictions for large models with high-frequency ranges. These updates together offer more comprehensive modelling capabilities, meeting diverse application needs while enhancing precision and solution flexibility.

Finally, non-linear static analysis is improved in this version. In MSC Nastran 2024.1, a new solver called NLPERF for SOL400 significantly reduced run times for nonlinear analysis. In 2024.2, the solver is more robust, and new functionality and enhancements further improve the solver’s performance. Lagrange multipliers for rigid elements (e.g. RBE2, RBE3, RROD) can share dependent grid points. SPCs can be applied to those grid points, with new options for calculating average nodal normal vectors and controlling distributed surface load for shell elements with offsets triggering more accurate results in cases where adjacent elements show significantly different normal directions (90° or more. New outputs such as GPFORCE (grid point forces), ESE (element strain energy), and intermediate result outputs facilitate analysis by checking, debugging and monitoring jobs for improved results.