Drucella Andersen

Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

May 19, 1993
(Phone: 202/358-4727)

Ann Redelfs
Rice University, Houston
(Phone: 713/285-5181)

RELEASE: 93-90

INDUSTRY TESTS NASA COMPUTER PROGRAMS FOR EFFICIENT DESIGNING

NASA and the nation's large aerospace companies are working

together to see how NASA computer programs can help industry
design and produce aircraft more efficiently.

Member companies of the Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design

Industrial Consortium (MADIC) are working with NASA to complete a
1-year evaluation of NASA computer simulation programs to find out
how well they work on real aircraft design problems. The Center
for Research on Parallel Computation at Rice University, Houston,
is coordinating research activities and technical workshops under
the project and is a major participant.

The ultimate goal is to integrate all the factors involved in

aircraft design and production. Aeronautical engineers
traditionally decide on the overall shape of an aircraft first,
then separately design the plane's other systems, such as
propulsion, flight controls and cockpit displays. Changes to any
of the systems during the design process, however, often can have
an impact on the other components.

"With these design tools, industry will be able to design

aircraft systems simultaneously," said Lee Holcomb, NASA's
Director for High Performance Computing and Communications. "This
project is a significant step in organizing the institutions who
have technologies that can make this multidisciplinary design
concept feasible."

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The project, which started in April, will evaluate 10-15 NASA

simulation programs, called "solvers", that approximate the
physical phenomena involved in aircraft design, such as the
lifting power of wings and the weight of components. The study
will develop criteria to assess these programs and will come up
with a plan to incorporate existing NASA solvers into
multidisciplinary design methods.

Testing NASA Software on Real Problems

Two of the solvers will be selected for evaluation by a group

of industry researchers. A key part of the project will develop
the requirements for using these programs on parallel processing
computers, which use many processors to work simultaneously on a
problem. The processors are simpler than those in traditional
supercomputers, but give a faster result because there are many
more of them.

The industry researchers will evaluate the two programs on real

design problems to find out how well they agree in selected areas
with known solutions. This is vital to integrating design and
production factors because, as inputs constantly change, their
effect on the ultimate design must be measured accurately.

"Multidisciplinary analysis and design will represent an

increasingly important application for parallel computation and if
it can be done efficiently, it eventually could revolutionize the
practice of engineering design," said Ken Kennedy, Director of the
Center for Research on Parallel Computation at Rice.

Project researchers from NASA, Rice University, Syracuse

University, Argonne National Laboratory and the MADIC consortium
are taking part in the effort.

MADIC is a group of U.S. firms interested in developing

pre-competitive software for multidisciplinary design systems.
Members include General Dynamics, General Electric, Grumman,
Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell-North American Aircraft,
Vought and United Technologies.

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