Simplifying and Scaling FEA Post-Processing with Altair Compose at Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation
Technology Category
- Sensors - Barcode Readers
- Sensors - Level Sensors
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Time Sensitive Networking
About The Customer
Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation (NGSC) is an American multinational corporation that is a global leader in innovation and technology for aerospace and defense. The company's marine systems division, located in Sunnyvale, CA, is a leader in the design, development, and production of advanced naval systems. NGSC is known for its commitment to technological innovation and its significant contributions to the aerospace and defense sectors.
The Challenge
Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation (NGSC), a global leader in aerospace and defense technology, was facing a significant challenge in their post-processing workflow. The process involved manually calculating combined stresses from NASTRAN results, which was particularly time-consuming due to the presence of hundreds of 1D beam elements with varying cross-sections in some system level models. Each type of 1D beam required its own set of calculations. The challenge was to automate this workflow to save time, minimize errors with simple user inputs, and scale the process to allow a variety of models, such as different cross-sections, to be post-processed.
The Solution
Altair and NGSC engineers collaborated to address this challenge by first discussing the current workflow, identifying pain points, and sharing necessary materials like equations, sample NASTRAN model, and results. Altair Compose was chosen as the solution due to its extensive library of FEA results readers, developed for Altair HyperView and Altair HyperGraph, and the community's familiarity with the Open Matrix Language. A 'template' script was provided to the NGSC team, which read in their model and results files, modified the data as per the provided engineering equations, and output a custom results file that could be visualized in HyperView. With further collaboration, NGSC engineers were able to modify, expand, and apply the script to their production level post-processing.
Operational Impact
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