HBMShop | Training | Resources

arrow_back_ios

Main Menu

arrow_back_ios

Main Menu

See All Acoustic End-of-Line Test Systems See All DAQ and instruments See All Electroacoustics See All Software See All Transducers See All Vibration Testing Equipment See All Academy See All Resource Center See All Applications See All Industries See All Insights See All Services See All Support See All Our Business See All Our History See All Our Sustainability Commitment See All Global Presence
arrow_back_ios

Main Menu

See All Actuators See All Combustion Engines See All Durability See All eDrive See All Transmission & Gearboxes See All Turbo Charger See All DAQ Systems See All High Precision and Calibration Systems See All Industrial electronics See All Power Analyser See All S&V Hand-held devices See All S&V Signal conditioner See All Accessories See All DAQ Software See All Drivers & API See All nCode - Durability and Fatigue Analysis See All ReliaSoft - Reliability Analysis and Management See All Test Data Management See All Utility See All Vibration Control See All Acoustic See All Current / voltage See All Displacement See All Load Cells See All Pressure See All Strain Gauges See All Torque See All Vibration See All LDS Shaker Systems See All Power Amplifiers See All Vibration Controllers See All Accessories for Vibration Testing Equipment See All Training Courses See All Whitepapers See All Acoustics See All Asset & Process Monitoring See All Custom Sensors See All Data Acquisition & Analysis See All Durability & Fatigue See All Electric Power Testing See All NVH See All Reliability See All Smart Sensors See All Vibration See All Weighing See All Automotive & Ground Transportation See All Calibration See All Installation, Maintenance & Repair See All Support Brüel & Kjær See All Release Notes See All Compliance See All Our People
arrow_back_ios

Main Menu

See All CANHEAD See All GenHS See All LAN-XI See All MGCplus See All Optical Interrogators See All QuantumX See All SomatXR See All Fusion-LN See All Accessories See All Hand-held Software See All Accessories See All BK Connect / Pulse See All API See All Microphone Sets See All Microphone Cartridges See All Acoustic Calibrators See All Special Microphones See All Microphone Pre-amplifiers See All Sound Sources See All Accessories for acoustic transducers See All Experimental testing See All Transducer Manufacturing (OEM) See All Accessories See All Non-rotating (calibration) See All Rotating See All CCLD (IEPE) accelerometers See All Charge Accelerometers See All Impulse hammers / impedance heads See All Cables See All Accessories See All Electroacoustics See All Noise Source Identification See All Environmental Noise See All Sound Power and Sound Pressure See All Noise Certification See All Industrial Process Control See All Structural Health Monitoring See All Electrical Devices Testing See All Electrical Systems Testing See All Grid Testing See All High-Voltage Testing See All Vibration Testing with Electrodynamic Shakers See All Structural Dynamics See All Machine Analysis and Diagnostics See All Process Weighing See All Calibration Services for Transducers See All Calibration Services for Handheld Instruments See All Calibration Services for Instruments & DAQ See All On-Site Calibration See All Resources See All Software License Management

nCode DesignLife

Highlights of recent releases of nCode DesignLife are shown below, including links to webinars and request for a free trial.
nCode Support Portal
Female Industrial Engineer Solving Problems, Working on a Personal Computer, Two Monitor Screens Show CAD Software with 3D Prototype of Zero-Emissions Engine Being Tested. Working Modern Factory
chevron_left
chevron_right

Release highlights

The release of  nCode 2025.0 brings improvements in functionality and performance for nCode DesignLife, nCode GlyphWorks and nCode VibeSys  software products. 

This latest version mainly focused on customer requested enhancements, minor bug fixes and component updates for improved security that continue to deliver data-driven confidence

nCode screenshot

 

Expanded Premium Materials Database for Advanced Analysis

Significant additions to the Premium Materials Database, generated under a Small Business Innovation Research contract funded by the United States Air Force. Data rights are owned by Select Engineering Services (SES), located in Utah USA. The data was generated to investigate the effect of different heat treatments and surface finishes on the following materials:  

 

  • 300M Steel (20 entries)

  • 4340 Steel (4 entries)

  • 7075-T7351 Aluminium Alloy (6 entries)

Beta Release of Faster FE Translation for Improved Efficiency

New FE translation option is provided as a beta release. Reading data from FE results files can be a significant proportion of the total analysis time, and this release provides some translation speed increases and will continue to be developed during 2025. Improvements are achieved by better use of multiple translation processes for small numbers of loadcases.

  • For example, for a 3 million element model with a single load case using the default 4 translation processes, the speed of translation is over 4 times faster.

 

Latest supported FE results files include:

  • Ansys .rst 2025 R1
  • Abaqus .odb 2022, 2023, 2024
  • MSC.Nastran .op2 2024.1
  • Altair Optistruct .op2 and .h3d 2024.0

 

➡️Current customers on active software maintenance can gain access to nCode 2025.0 and its full release documentation using the Support Portal

Release highlights

The release of nCode 2024.1 brings improvements in functionality and performance for nCode DesignLife, nCode GlyphWorks, and nCode VibeSys software products encompassing 155 built-in processing and display glyphs and support for over 50 data formats. 

Current customers on active software maintenance can gain access to nCode 2024.1 and full release documentation using the Support Portal.

nCode StressGradient screenshot

Stress gradient correction

The effect of a notch in a finite element analysis will normally overpredict the fatigue damage. Typically, the fatigue strength reduction factor for a notch is always less then the elastic stress concentration factor.  The stress gradient correction available in DesignLife allows the user to take account of this difference and thus give a much less conservative estimate of the fatigue damage.

The stress gradient correction is now available within a Vibration Fatigue analysis, therefore now allows for a more accurate calculation of the effect of localized stress concentrations when carrying out a frequency based analysis

Seam weld vibration fatigue analysis

Seam weld fatigue analysis based on vibration loads in DesignLife only previously supported frequency response results in the FE files. DesignLife now supports modal force results. This not only allows more efficient computation in the frequency domain, but it also allows users of most FE codes to use the recommended force method with the more efficient modal results.

nCode SeamWeldVibration screenshot
GlyphWorks 03

Automatic Re-submission of Batch Jobs

Batch jobs can now be automatically re-submitted after a failure due to license availability. The new functionality is supported in both flowproc and the DesignLife specific dtproc. This feature is controlled by the use of two new command line switches that control the number of re-tries and the time period between the re-tries.

This was a beta feature at 2024.0 but is now fully supported.

Other enhancements:

  • Default number of parallel translation processes now increased to 4 for faster reading of FE results data.

Release highlights

The release of nCode 2024.0 brings improvements in functionality and performance for nCode DesignLife, nCode GlyphWorks, and nCode VibeSys software products encompassing 155 built-in processing and display glyphs and support for over 50 data formats. 

Current customers on active software maintenance can gain access to nCode 2024.0 and full release documentation using the Support Portal.

GlyphWorks 03

Automatic Re-submission of Batch Jobs – Beta Feature

Batch jobs can now be automatically re-submitted after a failure due to license availability. The new functionality is supported in both flowproc and the DesignLife specific dtproc. This feature is controlled by the use of two new command line switches that control the number of re-tries and the time period between the re-tries.

Weld Hot Spot with Shell Models

This method has been available for several years for solid element FE models and has now been extended to use with Shell models.
Weld hot spot extracts calculates stresses at the weld toe by the extrapolation of the stress in front of the weld from either 2 or 3 points. Weld toe locations and the extrapolation direction are defined in the same weld location file that is used in a solid seam weld analysis. The stresses calculated by this method can be used in the standard SN and Safety factor engines.
 

DesignLife

Extended Support for Repeated Entity IDs

More and more FE codes and pre-processors are supported either multiple parts that allow duplicate entity IDs or simple allowing the same IDs for different element types for example. DesignLife already supports repeated IDs for ABAQUS ODB file for example but now this support has been extended to ABAQUS, NASTRAN and Altair input decks, NASTRAN/Altair OP2 results files and Altair H3D results files.

Other enhancements

  • Support for multiple results cases in the ANSYS MCF file (modal coordinates).
  • Improved seam weld waning file (control over the precision of the position information).
  • Updated FE version support

o Dassault ABAQUS - now support FIL files and 5 versions of ODB directly (2019 – 2023)
o ANSYS 2024R1
o NX NASTRAN 2306
o Altair OP2 and H3D 2023
 

New Line method for Critical Distance_16.9

Critical Distance ‘Line’ method

Two options are provided in DesignLife to account for notch sensitivity: Critical Distance and Stress Gradient. A new method named ‘Line’ has been added to the Critical Distance method. A new property, CriticalDistanceMethod is added for this purpose. Another property named NumberOfPoints defines the number of points to use for the Line method stress calculation. This method is considered to give a more accurate measure of the sub-surface stress at the critical distance.

Multiple event fatigue results to a single Abaqus ODB file

A new property named MultipleEventsSingleODB has been added to ‘PostProcessorExportODB’ Post Processor object and FEOutput Glyph, which when set to True will enable writing multiple duty cycle load provider events results to a single Dassault Abaqus ODB file format. This is more convenient for the customer and also can save significant disk space.

File format version enhancements:

  • Dassault Abaqus 2023 .ODB & .FIL
  • Ansys 2023 R2 .RST
  • FEMZIP-N 1.7.13
     
Faster analysis with 4 processing threads

Faster Analysis with 4 processing Threads

The number of threads included by default in DesignLife has been increased from 2 to 4.

This will give a up to doubling of the analysis speed before needing extra thread licenses. 

The 4 processing threads are also available for the translation phase and can lead to a significant reduction in the translation phase of the overall process.

Further enhancements

Additional improvements in nCode 2023 include:

  • Overall spectrum available as a specific option in the ComplexFrequencyManipulation glyph  
  • MATLAB MAT file format supported up to version 7.3 
  • Time series can be saved in the MDF 4 file format 
  • CSV files now readable directly as Time Series
  • New vibration fatigue glyphs available for EN, spot weld and seam weld analyses
  • New worked example for vibration loading with modal coordinates 
  • Seven new materials in the premium material database 
  • Three new FKM material databases (5th, 6th and 7th editions of the FKM Guide

Material properties defined per entity

In nCode 2022 material properties can be defined directly from a formatted CSV file. This allows to set different properties for each entity or to default some or all the properties for all or some of the entities. This enables material properties to vary by location across a whole FE model, improving the accuracy of fatigue life predictions for components such as castings. This functionality is available for standard SN, standard EN and multi-temperature EN analyses.

Further enhancements

Additional improvements in nCode 2022 include:
  • Time series file formats updates: Dewesoft DXD, Vector MDF4, HBK BKC
  • The MDF4 file support is now included with Prenscia Access
  • Matlab 2021b is now supported in the Matlab scripting glyph
  • Save Process With Data option also saves a .flo file
  • Brown-Miller added to the multi-axial EN solver options
  • Updated support for all the major FE codes
  • Additional materials in the standard database
  • Constant and variable amplitude seam weld data
  • Two new aluminium seam weld materials
  • New ASME steel seam weld
  • PamCrash FEMZipped files now supported
  • Four versions of Abaqus ODB will be supported at this release: 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021
Cyber essentials - certificate of assurance

We are certified Cyber Essentials Plus (CEP)

 

  • CEP is a UK Government backed industry supported scheme. It helps us to address the required cyber security standards we must meet for our customers. Certification demonstrates our commitment to cyber security. 
  • Security vulnerabilities have been resolved in IT infrastructure, software applications and our own software products. 
  • Process improvements have been made so that we do not accrue technical debt as new vulnerabilities emerge.

Ready to achieve success through failure prediction?

Modern Slavery Statement     Imprint    Cookie Policy    Privacy Policy    Sitemap    Ethical Business

 

 

© 2025 Hottinger Brüel & Kjær

 

 

close
nCode logo
Graphics Brand

We have moved ${referer} to www.hbkworld.com

 

This will bring together HBM, Brüel & Kjær, nCode, ReliaSoft, and Discom brands, helping you innovate faster for a cleaner, healthier, and more productive world.

close
ReliaSoft-Logo-webp
Graphics Brand

We have moved ${referer} to www.hbkworld.com

 

This will bring together HBM, Brüel & Kjær, nCode, ReliaSoft, and Discom brands, helping you innovate faster for a cleaner, healthier, and more productive world.

close
Prenscia HBM-Logo rgb
Graphics Brand

We have moved ${referer} to www.hbkworld.com

 

This will bring together HBM, Brüel & Kjær, nCode, ReliaSoft, and Discom brands, helping you innovate faster for a cleaner, healthier, and more productive world.

close
HBM-Logo blue rgb
Graphics Brand

We have moved ${referer} to www.hbkworld.com

 

This will bring together HBM, Brüel & Kjær, nCode, ReliaSoft, and Discom brands, helping you innovate faster for a cleaner, healthier, and more productive world.

close
logo of Brüel & Kjær (BKSV), experts of sound and vibration measurements from HBK
Graphics Brand

We have moved ${referer} to www.hbkworld.com

 

This will bring together HBM, Brüel & Kjær, nCode, ReliaSoft, and Discom brands, helping you innovate faster for a cleaner, healthier, and more productive world.