TO THE MOON

For a new company, doing a space launch is no easy matter. Design is a long and intricate process.

Space-launch vehicle developer Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, of Hawthorne, Calif., now uses a product lifecycle management system to manage product data, designs, and simulations.

Engineers at space-launch vehicle maker SpaceX now call upon a product lifecycle management system to help track the design of its Falcon line of launch vehicles, like this one.

The eight-year-old company makes a Falcon line of launch vehicles, powered by internally developed Merlin engines. The launch vehicles offer light, medium, and heavy lift capabilities to deliver spacecraft into any altitude and inclination, from low-Earth orbit to planetary missions, said Chris Thompson, vice president of structures at SpaceX.

SpaceX currently has 14 missions on its manifest.

The company now uses Teamcenter PLM software from Siemens PLM Software of Plano, Texas, to track engineering projects and changes. It also standardized on the CAD platform, NX, from the same vendor.

RAMPING UP HDTV

Today’s televisions and video systems present challenge enough for us amateurs in our living rooms. So imagine the difficulties for those who design the delivery platforms.

Take Redback Networks of San Jose, Calif., which makes broadband networking systems. Currently, 15 telephone carriers use Redback’s SmartEdge router platform to deliver a mix of broadband, phone, and TV services to more than 50 million subscribers.

But when company engineers set out to create a triple-play platform for high-definition television, high-density video on demand, and broadband, they needed to obtain a twofold increase in power dissipation of its line cards, said Wendy Lu, a Redback mechanical engineer.

That increase created a thermal management problem. But Lu and her colleagues overcame this challenge by simulating airflow and heat transfer within the enclosure.

For this, she used FloTherm thermal simulation software from Mentor Graphics Mechanical Analysis Division of Marlborough, Mass., the company formerly known as Flomerics.

By optimizing plenum geometry and using a higher-performing fan, engineers were able to double system airflow. The new platform is just going into production and has already been selected for use by ChungHwa Telecom of Taiwan, according to Redback.

MISSION SIMULATION THEATER

A Baltimore-based aerospace and defense contractor is making it possible for its employees to review mission simulations and collaborate on engineering projects—no matter the user’s location—thanks to a theater equipped with 3-D engineering and visualization software.

The aerospace-defense contractor, Alliant Techsystems Inc., recently installed the visualization center at its mission systems headquarters in Baltimore.

The center includes a 40-seat immersive theater with visualization capabilities, software that generates immersive 3-D imagery from engineering applications, two team-collaboration rooms, and a conference room.

Alliant uses the simulation center for a range of projects. Users take a seat in the theater to review mission simulations in real time and to study—via the visualization software—how defense technology parts would function and be manufactured, said Ron Holshey, Alliant’s project director of virtual engineering for manufacturing, production, and repair.

The center is linked via secure network connections to other ATK facilities, and efforts are under way to connect to government sites. Those links would allow engineering teams across the country to collaborate on design and engineering projects. They could also participate in reviews of actual and simulated missions via shared presentation and videoconferencing, Holshey said.

“In initial work at the simulation center, we were able to demonstrate collaboration with engineering resources at one of our California sites in a real-time test of a missile guidance package for a defense client,” he said.

Mechdyne Corp. of Marshalltown, Iowa, provided the visualization software, the large-screen display, a computer graphics cluster, and audiovisual and control station systems for the center.

YOU BUILD IT

As a new feature of its Matlab and Simulink software, The MathWorks is giving customers access to an underlying modeling language so they can create their own models of components—individual valves, resistors, motors, wires, and the like—and solve simulations using differential algebraic equations.

Among the company’s software offerings is Simscape, which uses a modeling language based on Matlab language. Simscape works with Simulink and contains tools for modeling and simulating multidomain systems in which mechanical, hydraulic, and electrical components interact. According to The MathWorks, Simscape and other physical modeling products from the company make it simpler to develop multidomain models for simulation.

Two views of a valve: The cross-section at right equals the Simscape schematic at left. Colored blocks in the Simscape version correspond to the colored arrows in the illustration and represent hydraulic flow paths. The modeling language is accessible for creating individual components.

According to the company, access to the Simscape language lets users develop library blocks representing dynamics in the form of differential algebraic equations, a useful mathematical representation for physical network systems like circuits, mechanical systems, and fluid systems, where force, pressure, and current can flow in both directions in the block diagram. The MathWorks recommends the language for analyzing technologies such as fuel cells, wind power systems, and hybrid electric vehicles, which often require complex simulation of interacting systems that may involve chemicals, electricity, and mechanics.

Use of Simscape requires Matlab and Simulink, which are sold separately. U.S. prices start at $2,000. Other simulation products from The MathWorks include SimMechanics, SimDriveline, SimElectronics, SimHydraulics, and SimPowerSystems.

WORKING TOGETHER VIRTUALLY

Virtual worlds can offer a new locale for problem solving. But not before users get up to speed on how to work that world, according to researchers at Pennsylvania State University in State College.

They recently looked at how virtual teams can solve real-world problems by collaborating in Second Life, said Nathan McNeese, an undergraduate psychology student who worked on the project. Second Life is a popular virtual world in which users interact and even carry out business, using avatars that stand in for themselves.

“Overall, Second Life is a viable option for group work,” McNeese said. “But there’s definitely a learning curve with it and accomplishing even basic tasks can be difficult, especially if you’ve never used it before.”

You can collaborate well in Second Life using avatars that stand in for you and your teammates, Penn State researchers found recently.

To find out how groups collaborate in these spaces, the researchers asked student teams to solve a problem, posed by a video, using different meeting styles. Ten teams met face-to-face, 10 worked together via teleconferencing tools, and 10 teams met as avatars in Second Life.

Participants each viewed a video about an eagle rescue. Then, they met to decide how to rescue the injured eagle. All the groups had to decide who would rescue the eagle and which type of transportation they would use. They also had to estimate the time it would take to complete the task.

The groups using Second Life were confined to text-based communication—that is, they couldn’t speak live—and they had to learn the complex keyboard strokes required for avatar movement, McNeese said. That didn’t stop the groups from completing the assigned task, but they did take the longest time to finish, he said.

Although the face-to-face teams had the most confidence in their performance, the Second Life teams answered with the most accuracy, he added.

McNeese, whose own knowledge of Second Life was limited before starting this project, said that the research will open doors to more collaborative use of virtual worlds.

McNeese’s fellow researchers were Gerry Santoro, a Penn State assistant professor of information sciences and technology; Michael McNeese, a Penn State professor of information sciences and technology and psychology; and Mark Pfaff, an assistant professor of media arts and sciences at Indiana University of Indianapolis.

A SMOOTHER FLIGHT

It comes blasting out of the blue on your airplane flight: sudden bumpiness. It arrives without warning, and it can be quite frightening.

It’s called clear-air turbulence, and a new forecasting method developed by a researcher at the University of Georgia could help pilots chart new courses around these patches of rough air that can turn an otherwise unremarkable flight into one to write home about.

Commercial aircraft encounter severe turbulence about 5,000 times each year, and the majority of these events occur at 10,000 feet, said John Knox, an assistant geography professor at the university in Athens, Ga. He leads a research team that has devised a method to give pilots a way to avoid turbulence not associated with thunderstorms or significant cloudiness.

One problem with the current forecasting models is that they are at least partly empirical—that is, they rely on knowledge of thunderstorms in the area, Knox said.

The researchers’ method is based on something called the Lighthill-Ford theory of spontaneous imbalance, developed by a British theoretician in the early 1990s. Knox and his colleagues spent several years turning this theory into a forecasting tool.

They applied the theory to predict energy associated with gravity waves—phenomena in the atmosphere that look like ocean waves but that can occur in clear air.

“Essentially, what we have is a mathematical model that translates the theory into numbers that describe gravity waves,” Knox said. “These numbers can then drive an algorithm that gives you a forecast of the kinetic energy associated with turbulence.”

A paper about the method was published in the October 2008 issue of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.

Knox’s co-researchers are Donald McCann of McCann Aviation Weather Research Inc. in Overland Park, Kan., and Paul Williams, a meteorology professor at the University of Reading in Reading, England.

RIGHT ON THE PAGE

Rimpull Corp. of Olathe, Kan., which makes earthmoving vehicles for the mining and construction industries, has sped up the time it takes to create service manuals by nearly 90 percent. The trick: installing a software program that helps create the manuals automatically.

The company didn’t have a software application to automatically import its 3-D CAD models, created in SolidWorks, into the manuals. To import those models, employees needed to convert the 3-D to a 2-D image, type in the bill-of-materials, import both the image and BOM into an authoring tool, add descriptions and procedures, and finally print the document.

A typical Rimpull manual contains more than 300 pages of information generated in this fashion. Employees spent one day creating two pages, said Scott Schranz, who is responsible for engineering support activities and documentation at Rimpull.

To speed that effort, the company recently implemented Pages3D Professional from QuadriSpace of Allen, Texas.

The software helps create documents with 3-D views and parts lists by loading images directly from the CAD files.

Now, new-parts pages can be created in minutes, Schranz said.

Company officials are considering using the new software to make their manuals available in a 3-D portable document format, which would allow customers to rotate, pan, and zoom in on the 3-D model.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Xerox Corp. of Rochester, N.Y., has introduced the Xerox 6279 Wide Format Printer, a black-and-white digital printer, copier, and scanner especially suited to engineering and architectural renderings. /// 3D-Tool of Heddesheim, Germany, has released 3D-Tool version 8.5, a CAD viewer that displays 3-D models and 2-D drawings. /// CADsmart of Bristol, England, has released version six of its CAD skills assessment software. The upgraded CADsmart uses live video recordings to offer CAD training and to assess employees’ and potential employees’ AutoCAD and MicroStation abilities. /// The CAD program Solid Edge from Siemens PLM Software of Plano, Texas, now supports the line of 3-D mice from 3Dconnexion of Fremont, Calif. The 3-D mice offer Solid Edge users more navigational features compared to standard mice, according to 3Dconnexion. /// Proficiency of Marlborough, Mass., which makes applications for CAD interoperability, has introduced upgrades to the Collaboration Gateway service offering, through which customers can submit CAD models for translation and receive back completed, usable models in their desired format. /// CCE of Farmington Hills, Mich., has added the ability to transform and rotate components in assemblies in its EnSuite version 2 viewing and translation software, used for multi-CAD viewing and for translation. /// Flowmaster of Glenview, Ill., has released an upgrade to its Flowmaster Automotive systems simulation software for the automotive industry, to version 7.6. /// Pump-Flo Solutions of Lacey, Wash., which makes pump selection software for the fluid handling industry, has released version 10 of its Pump-Flo application. /// 3D Systems Corp. of Rock Hill, S.C., which makes 3-D printing, rapid prototyping, and manufacturing solutions, has released its ProJet CPX 3000 3-D Production System, a high-definition 3-D printer designed for high-volume, high-resolution production of RealWax patterns from digital data.