OptiOpt: Integrated Design and Optimization Of Thermal/Structural/Optical Systems

C&R Technologies (a.k.a. Cullimore & Ring Technologies)

Littleton, CO

Integration of suite of off-the-shelf engineering tools to enable for the first time concurrent design of thermal, structural, and optical subsystems.

• Developed inter-program communications to automate the flow of information through the following analysis tools to predict a design's optical performance.
• C&R's SINDA/FLUINT and Thermal Desktop® for thermal analysis and design.
• MSC.Nastran® for structural analysis.
• Team member Optical Research Associates's Code V® for the optical component.
• Enhanced and rewrote Code V, SINDA/FLUINT, and Thermal Desktop to produce the parametrization, the external command modes, and the significantly increased speed required to execute such programs iteratively in a top-level optimization environment.

• Team member Sigmadyne commercialized under the name SigFit™ the link it developed to convert the displacement outputs of MSC.Nastran into Code V inputs for final evaluation. Integrated the new features in Themal Desktop as commercial off-the-shelf software and their in user everyday, especially the NASTRAN links, parametric Thermal Desktop, dynamic Thermal Desktop which are all results of OptiOpt.

• Every NASA center currently uses Thermal Desktop and the OptiOpt results are part of that final product. In addition, US Army, Navy, National Laboratories are also on the customer list.

Return to NASA SBIR Success Listings

Aerospace; Mechanical; Optics; Sensors; Software; Space Systems

Curator: SBIR Support                  07/20/06