Use of versatile pre- and postprocessor enables space agency to reduce training costs

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) uses Femap to reduce simulation turnaround allowing more time for research and development. The company is now able to easily generate custom analysis models and significantly reduce training costs.

The Chofu Aerospace Center (CAC) Aerodrome Branch of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) develops advanced engineering technologies for future applications. The Advanced Composite Research Center at the Institute of Aeronautic Technology (IAT) works with materials that can withstand temperatures ranging from 3000 degrees Celsius to 4 degrees Kelvin.

The scale of research ranges across structures, such as the main wing of an airplane, the fuel tank of a spacecraft and causes of carbon fiber delamination. In each case, the finite element analysis (FEA) solvers used for those analyses vary considerably.

“We select FEA solvers based on the size of the analysis model and the problems we want to solve,” says Dr. Akinori Yoshimura, a researcher at the Advanced Composite Research Center. “Although we work on a large number of research programs, there are fewer than 20 researchers in our section. So we wanted to avoid having to learn how to use a new pre- and postprocessor every single time we use a different CAE (computer-aided engineering) solver.”

The Advanced Composite Research Center solved this issue by selecting product lifecycle management (PLM) technology, deploying Siemens PLM Software’s Femap™ software, a pre- and postprocessor that is used to generate input data for most industry standard solvers. Once the researchers learned how to use Femap, they could generate FEA input data for many of their preferred solvers. This eliminates their concerns about learning new software and reduces the workload of creating an FEA model, enabling them to spend more time solving research problems.

Using only one pre- and postprocessor means reduced training costs for student research assistants. “If we have to use different pre- and postprocessors for different solvers, it means that we can only assign a limited range of research topics to each student,” says Yoshimura. “But if we only have to learn to use Femap, we can assign many different types of topics to them.”

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