Breaking down design-to-analysis walls

Each time a satellite is propelled into orbit, it confirms the skill of space industry engineers. Montreal-based MAYA Simulation Ltd. has played a key role for many such missions, providing engineering design and analysis services to characterize, simulate and test the vibration, shock, fatigue and heat-transfer behavior of orbital platforms.

A typical project is composed of conceptual, preliminary and critical design phases followed by a test-readiness review. Across these stages, design engineers, program managers, component suppliers and end users must share, compare and understand a range of data and analysis assumptions.

Maya acknowledges they used the typical over-the-wall approach to information hand-offs in the past. However, they continually look for better ways to not only share but efficiently reuse product and engineering data. A key benefit of leveraging that data is a better use of engineering time by eliminating rework and streamlining workflows. Maya turned to Siemens’ Teamcenter for Simulation software to realize this.

Beyond CAD
Maya engineers first put Teamcenter’s simulation management capabilities to the test on a model of the HESSI satellite, a scientific spacecraft launched in 2002. Given they knew the exact before-and-after details of the HESSI mission’s operational parameters, they realized it would make an excellent case study for gauging the software’s capabilities and to assess if the software would help eliminate some of the design and simulation process bottlenecks.

“Managing your data is just one aspect,” says Remi Duquette, Maya senior staff engineer. “We already manage product data and material data (for sharing). Now, Teamcenter for Simulation enables engineers and engineering managers to establish well-documented workflows and supply automation to many more functions in the conceptual, design and analysis steps.”

Engineers were also looking for a faster and more consistent way to build the right analysis model with the right content. A key aspect of Teamcenter’s solution to this is tagging, which has proven to be a time saver for Maya analysts.

“We use a CAE marking tool to tag information as a layer on top of the product structure, and manage the data that analysts will require,” Duquette explains. For example, the thermal analysis of HESSI’s in-orbit configuration was very sensitive to the properties of a gold surface coating, while the same information was not as relevant for a launch vibration study, so that data could be tagged on or off.

The software also allows users to create rules for meshing, dictating which components should be meshed and how, and applying these rules when the data is imported into third-party analysis software. Details can also be turned back on for another analyst whose task needs that information. Conversely, the same set of data can be examined under a different set of boundary conditions, all through an automated setup. Users can even do a search on just the components that are relevant to, say, a durability analysis.

Duquette points out that anyone in the workflow can set a choice of rules to filter or reuse model data and apply such attributes as material data by easily copying and pasting from an Excel spreadsheet.

Global Sharing
Teamcenter for Simulation now allows many more people in the project workflow to define subassemblies and assemblies for analysis across multiple vendors, creating more opportunities for design improvement. For example, mass budget is a key constraint in the design of satellite systems. Using Teamcenter, vendors can share simulation results with other team members so that decisions on selection of a particular design can be based on the latest performance information and the impact on overall system mass is immediately evident.

Duquette works with a distributed team for his design projects and finds the engineering team is very responsive to this approach. It gives program management direct visibility into the project workflow, keeps product development in “always current” mode, and increases part and system reuse to save time and free up resources for other opportunities.

“Our HESSI case study shows that you can drive any third-party software package,” he notes, “and the unified data platform means that simulation can either lead or validate design.”

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