Ansys nCode DesignLife

Ansys nCode DesignLife - Enterprise Fatigue Life Prediction Software

Ansys nCode DesignLife is fatigue analysis software. Using finite element results from Ansys Mechanical and Ansys LS-DYNA, it accumulates damage from repeated loading to predict a product's life, so materials and geometries can be compared and optimised for expected use before the first prototype or test.

It was developed with HBK and runs inside Ansys Workbench, with direct access to the full nCode interface.

Ansys nCode DesignLife 2026.1

• Multi-temperature fatigue: cycle-by-cycle tracking across temperatures, with improved temperature-based fatigue methods (2026.0).
• Seam weld detection: more control over automated solid seam weld root and notch identification (2026.1).
• Ansys 2026 R1 results: reads Ansys .rst files from 2026 R1, alongside current Abaqus, Nastran and OptiStruct formats (2026.1).

Read more: nCode DesignLife release notes (HBK)

Ansys nCode DesignLife Enterprise

Full capability, including time-domain and frequency-domain fatigue, seam and spot welds, and thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF). Using more than two cores requires parallel processing add-on licences.

Ansys nCode DesignLife Premium

Time-domain fatigue analysis, with custom analyses and safety factors.

Ansys nCode DesignLife Pro

Entry-level stress-life capability within the Mechanical interface.

Stress-Life, Strain-Life and Multiaxial Methods

Stress-life (SN) suits high-cycle fatigue, strain-life (EN) covers low-cycle fatigue where local plasticity controls life, and Dang Van predicts endurance limits under complex multiaxial loading. Safety factor analysis with mean stress corrections is widely used for engine and powertrain components.

Seam Welds, Spot Welds and Vibration Fatigue

Weld lines are identified automatically for fillet, overlap and laser seam welds, spot welds are assessed around their edge, and vibration fatigue simulates shaker tests driven by random, swept-sine, sine-dwell or sine-on-random loading in the frequency domain.

Common Fatigue and Durability Consultation Topics

• Component durability: life under service load histories.
• Welded structures: seam and spot weld fatigue.
• Vibration fatigue: life under shaker test and random vibration profiles.
• Test correlation: comparing predicted life with test results.

Have a project outside this list? Send us the specification. Where a study needs specialist knowledge, we draw on our wider Ansys partner network.

Related Products

• Ansys Mechanical: the FEA results nCode DesignLife evaluates.
• Ansys LS-DYNA: explicit results that can also feed fatigue analysis.
• Ansys Motion: multibody load histories for durability studies.

Oct ’26 update by the CADIT Ansys FEA Team.