A Thermal/Structural Analysis Process Incorporating Concurrent Engineering

The design of advanced aircraft structure requires that the design, structural, and thermal disciplines work in unison during the configuration synthesis iteration process. Automatic transfer of data between the disciplines is required to reduce duplication of work and overall cycle time. This paper presents a state-of-the-art process that incorporates concurrent engineering principles and allows a thermal engineer to provide accurate temperature distributions for large structural models (8000+ elements) in approximately two weeks. The primary tasks include obtaining CAD geometry from the structural designer, defining finite elements, applying thermal boundary conditions, computing temperatures, plotting results as X-Y or color contour plots, and transferring the temperatures to a corresponding structural model.