NASA AMES WINS 2002 SOFTWARE OF THE YEAR AWARD
Victoria Steiner
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Phone: 650/604-0176 or 650/604-9000
E-mail: vsteiner@mail.arc.nasa.gov
RELEASE: 02-88AR
Cart3D, an aerodynamic simulation tool developed jointly by Michael
Aftosmis and Dr. John Melton of NASA Ames Research Center, in California's
Silicon Valley. and Professor Marsha Berger of the Courant Institute,
New York University, was named today as the Software of the Year
2002 by NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board.
The Cart3D software package provides designers and engineers with
an automated, highly accurate computer simulation suite that streamlines
the conceptual and preliminary analysis of both new and existing
aerospace vehicles.
"Cart3D's novel algorithms and its state-of-the-art computational
efficiency combine to provide designers with a new level of automation
that reduces simulation time requirements by a factor of at least
250," said Aftosmis, one of the co-developers. "This level
of automation encourages designers to test more vehicle variations
over a wider range of flight conditions than previously possible."
Cart3D is the result of over 10 years of dedicated research and
software development, culminating in a revolutionary approach to
computational fluid dynamics - the computer simulation of how fluids
and gases flow around an object of a particular design. Cart3D's
fusion of cutting-edge technological advancements in fields as diverse
as mineralogy, computer graphics, computational geometry and fluid
dynamics provides engineers with a new industrial geometry processing
and fluids analysis capability unique in its level of automation
and efficiency.
"The Cart3D team is absolutely thrilled to receive this award,
which recognizes the utility and impact that Cart3D is having throughout
the engineering simulation community worldwide," said Melton.
"This is a great example of the success of an interdisciplinary
team with members from both a government research lab and a university,
where each member brought different perspectives and strengths to
the problem," added Berger.
Cart3D contributes to each of the NASA Aerospace Technology Enterprise
goals, and is an outstanding example of the importance of NASA-developed
software to both the military and economic security of the nation.
NASA utilizes the software to ensure the safety of future space
operations. Users of Cart3D include NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston,
in simulations of various crew escape configurations for NASA's
Space Launch Initiative program.
Before the advent of this software, the basic computational tool
-- the grid layout used in analyzing designs of airplanes and spacecraft
-- had to be hand-generated and required months or even years to
produce for complex models. Cart3D automates grid generation to
a remarkable degree, enabling even the most complex geometries to
be modeled 100 times faster than before.
Simulations generated by Cart3D help identify and fix problems in
military transport aircraft and helicopters. Cart3D allow simulation
of complex geometries in fields other than aerospace, ranging from
astrophysics to computer science to electromagnetics.
The software also is being used at a number of leading universities,
including Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
New York University, John Hopkins University, the Georgia Institute
of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. An expanding
list of over 100 commercial users includes the Boeing Company, Cessna
Aircraft, General Dynamics Electric Boat, Orbital Sciences Corp.,
Northrop Grumman, Silicon Graphics and Raytheon. Example projects
at these companies include the analysis of front-line military vehicles
and the conceptual design of new business jets.
"Cart3D's novel approach to geometry processing and spatial
discretization has had a worldwide impact on high-fidelity scientific
and engineering simulation in fields outside of aerospace, ranging
from astrophysics to computer science to electromagnetics,"
said Aftosmis.
Ames's Commercial Technology Office has licensed the software
for commercialization by ICEM CFD Engineering, a subsidiary of ANSYS,
Inc. Canonsburg, Penn. ANSYS provides sophisticated engineering
analyses tools to 84 of Fortune's top 100 industrial companies.
These licenses will extend Cart3D beyond traditional aerospace uses
and into other industries including automotive, electronics, turbomachinery
and industrial process simulation.
Ames' co-winner in the 2002 Software of the Year Award is NASA
Johnson Space Center, for its DSMC Analysis Code software package
that models the flow of low-density gases over flight surfaces.
-end-
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