Phoenix Integration Software Helps NASA Streamline Design Process For Reusable Launch Vehicle
Download a Printable Version (PDF)
The current space shuttle is aging fast and NASA needs a replacement. The sheer manpower and computing horsepower required to design and analyze a new shuttle is daunting. NASA turned to Phoenix Integration to help bring the numerous software tools, remote locations, and different computing platforms into a cohesive environment for systems design. The result was a system that allows them to analyze new concepts in a quarter of the time with the same resources. In addition, Phoenix's solution allows the geographically distributed design team to work together simultaneously, reducing their need to travel between NASA locations.
Situation
"Reusable Launch Vehicle design is a complex systems engineering problem that must balance many requirements for cost, performance, and safety," says Michelle Garn, NASA's Advanced Engineering Environment Implementation Lead.
One of the most complex challenges facing NASA is coordinating the engineering design team and the information needed for the various software applications used for design and analysis. Phoenix software was used to "wrap" each application and make it possible to flow data between applications, eliminating the tedious, error-prone process of manual data translation.
Building the Vehicle -The Role of Industry
NASA carries the vision and sets the requirements for the RLV, but someone has to build it. For that, NASA turns to the aerospace industry manufacturers. In early 2001, NASA issued technology and vehicle architecture contracts totaling more than $800M to more than twenty companies for phase one technology development concept studies and evaluations. NASA will evaluate the candidate architecture concepts and progress on development of key technologies. Winning design concepts will be "downselected" from the initial group and awarded follow-on contracts.
With the volume of new design information coming from industry, NASA needed a way to quickly evaluate these proposals and make recommendations for Phase II studies. This means putting more pressure on their engineers to evaluate concepts faster, all the while maintaining a consistent and repeatable design process so each concept is measured fairly.
The Solution - Process Integration Software
from Phoenix
In early 2001, NASA came up with a vision to streamline their design process and eliminate costly manual data translation. In addition, a central data sharing solution was proposed to allow remote design centers access to the design process.
Phoenix Integration helped NASA architect the solution and provided software and services to bring the integrated set of applications to the desktops of over 40 different engineers and designers.
Using the unique application server technology of Analysis Server NASA was able to quickly wrap and publish more than ten different software programs used for engineering design and analysis. Next, the solutions team installed ModelCenter to help the engineers build integrated processes to pass information between the applications automatically. Finally, end-users at NASA leveraged ModelCenter's trade study environment to run a variety of trade-off analyses for unique configurations.
The Phoenix software was coupled with the database capabilities of PTC's WindChill product to form an overall solution for NASA. Using WindChill, NASA was able to store many different process maps for use by different analysts. Once the design and analysis is complete, results are stored in WindChill for archival purposes and traceability of the design.
Payoff for the Customer
After only two days of training, design engineers were up and running with ModelCenter. After spending a few weeks wrapping applications, NASA engineers were seeing the benefits of the Phoenix software.
"We were able to wrap existing analysis codes and duplicate our current processes very quickly. The system now allows us to run hundreds of cases from distributed locations simultaneously and continuously," said Michelle Garn.
The payoff for NASA is the ability to evaluate hundreds of concepts faster. In less than two months, NASA had over ten applications wrapped, integrated and served remotely to an engineering team at six major sites.
Because the RLV design process is so complex, it takes a long time to analyze one design. In the past, it could take weeks before a design is accepted. With Phoenix software, a closed design can be determined in a matter of hours, allowing NASA to consider more concepts than before. "As a goal I am looking for us to double our productivity," says Roger Lepsch, NASA Aerospace Engineer and Lead for Technology Assessments.
With an already tight NASA budget, the cost savings were critical to the organization. NASA can evaluate more designs with the same manpower level, keeping overhead and expenses down.
The payoff to the aerospace industry is a solution that evaluates their concepts fairly and on equal footing compared to other proposals. Information from the analysis can be shared faster, resulting in faster turnaround time and better feedback for the industry.
