AND REQUIREMENTS TRACKING USING ARAS AND SHAREPOINT

Transcription

1 SIMULATION DATA MANAGEMENT AND REQUIREMENTS TRACKING FOR NASA MISSION DESIGN USING ARAS AND SHAREPOINT Tyler Bischel Dr. Peter J. Rohl Advatech Pacific Phase II SBIR

2 Contents Advatech Pacific Overview NASA SBIR Project Goals NASA Ames Mission Design Center The Simulation Bill of Material Requirements Management Integration with SharePoint Desktop Clients Analysis Tool Integration Summary 2

3 Advatech Pacific Company Information Engineering Research & Development Company Founded in 1995 Primary Business Focus Aerospace Vehicle Physics Based Modeling and Simulation Integrated System and Cost Analysis Tool Development Communications Systems Interoperability Engineering Design, Analysis and PLM/PDM Services Engineers / Scientists Locations San Bernardino, CA (HQ) Palmdale, CA Dayton, OH Tempe, AZ 3

4 Aerospace, Defense, and Commercial Modeling and Simulation Strategic Missiles and Rockets Spacecraft Satellites Expendable & Re-useable Launch Vehicles Re-entry Vehicles Space Shuttle Payload Integrated Design with Cost Analysis Hypersonics Range Safety Analysis Communications Hardware Satellite Tactical Comm. Disparate Network Integration Military & Civilian applications Aircraft & Systems Design Drafting Airframe structural analysis Engineering support for composites Manufacturing support Gas Turbine Engines Analysis Design Performance Applications 4

5 NASA SBIR Project Goals Develop a seamless environment for satellite mission design Introduce PLM approach to NASA mission design Develop a structured approach to simulation data management Facilitate reuse of engineering analysis models Integrate requirements and engineering analysis Integrate fragmented engineering analysis tools Leverage existing tools as much as possible 5

6 Customer: NASA Ames Mission Design Center (MDC) Performs three types of mission design studies: Center directives Announcements of opportunity Research proposals Studies range from back-of-the-envelope studies of a few days to fairly detailed mission designs of six to eight weeks duration Customers are both internal (NASA/government) and external In all cases, the final product is a mission proposal in the form of a report with supporting analysis data 6

7 The Problems Faced by the MDC Simulation models and data scattered all over individual engineers desktops and shared network drives No revision i control of simulation models and data No tracking of relationships between simulation models No mechanism to flag simulation models that are out-of-date of because the assumptions/models they depend on have changed No reusability of engineering analyses No relationships between requirements and engineering analyses to support the requirements Engineers spend a lot of time moving data from one analysis tool to another Commercial solutions for simulation data management are out of reach for the MDC from a cost standpoint 7

8 Advatech Pacific s Solution Development of a Virtual Satellite Integration Environment consisting of: A simulation data management solution, based on Aras and Microsoft SharePoint, integrated with the conceptual mission design tool (ATLAS), implementing a Simulation Bill Of Material A mechanism to link analysis models to requirements A Linked Model Environment integrating engineering analysis models and tools Automation and optimization 8

9 Challenges Faced by Advatech 1. Cultural Mission Design is different PLM is for manufacturing companies Every mission is unique Standardized processes limit the engineers creativity 2. Resources The MDC operates on a shoe-string budget. The budget to purchase software licenses is very limited. A lot of licenses are shared with other NASA organizations. Always operating in crisis mode. The next mission design is always due yesterday. We are trying to do an engine upgrade while the car is in the middle of a race. 9

10 Virtual Satellite Integration Environment SharePoint Science Traceability Matrix Remote Collaboration Simulation Traceability and Revision Management Aras Innovator Simulation Bill of Material Mission Linked Model Environment Requirements Design Product Atlas SolidWorks SolidWorks STK STK Thermal Desktop Thermal Desktop Automated CAD Interchange User Change Notifications 10

11 The Simulation Bill of Material Extending the notion of the classical BOM to management of simulation data and their relationships Tracks the relationship between versions of analysis models Supports release process for simulation data Notifies users automatically when their analysis models may be out of date Links analysis data to requirements The classical BOM is represented as a tree structure, whereas simulation data form a graph structure Root of the SBOM is a Project 11

12 SBOM Structure in Aras Custom item types defined in Aras to support satellite mission design Items are containers for simulation data/ documents Derived from out-of- the-box Aras items, support their lifecycle (versioning, release status, workflows, etc.) 12

13 Aras Innovator SBOM Item Types A number of custom Aras item types have been generated, supporting the specific types of data in the SBOM Their behavior and metadata is specifically targeted to suit their functions Accessible through the Aras user interface 13

14 Item Type Project The Project item type is at the root level l of a mission i design project It has associated with it a customer proposal, requirements, the actual mission i design and the end product 14

15 Item Type Proposal Every mission i design project is the result of a proposal The proposal item type captures all proposal-related information, including the proposal documents 15

16 Item Type Requirements Document Ultimately, t l mission i design and analysis is driven by requirements Since MDC lacked a requirements management system, we decided to develop this functionality inside Aras 16

17 Item Type Design Top level l collector item for a mission i design Contains all simulation and analysis models/data/results Exposes top-level metadata for the mission 17

18 Analysis Component Captures metadata t and behavior relevant for a particular simulation code Derived all from the same root class (Simulation Data) 18

19 Item Type Product The final product resulting from a mission i design study, which h can be a white paper, a PowerPoint document, a full proposal or a concept study 19

20 Simplified Class Diagram Implements three levels of abstraction Wrapper Interface to Aras Environment MDC-specific services Presentation Layer for UI 20

21 Revision Control of Dependent Models 1. Dep. node gets revised. New rev points to original i master node. Dep. Sim R1 Dep. Sim R2 Dep. Sim R1 Dep. Sim R2 MasterSim MasterSim R1 R1 2. Master node gets revised. Owner of dependent node is notified. New rev of dependent node points to new rev of master node. Dep. Sim Dep. Sim Dep. Sim R1 R1 R2 MasterSim R1 MasterSim R2 MasterSim R1 MasterSim R2 21

22 Access to the SBOM Three primary mechanisms for the user to interact with the SBOM: From the desktop: Desktop Clients Through SharePoint: SharePoint Client Directly through Aras Web Client 22

23 Exposure through SharePoint Project level l information Requirements data Final product 23

24 SBOM View as SharePoint Webpart SharePoint web parts are standard objects a SharePoint developer can use to implement custom functionality Users are familiar with treetype structures We use a SharePoint Tree Webpart to expose the project dependency structure in SharePoint The root is the satellite mission project All data related to a project is contained in the tree structure 24

25 SharePoint View of Requirements 25

26 SharePoint Data Upload User fills fields with metadata and uses a file browser to upload files Dependencies identified manually by the user Simulation Data Packages. 26

27 Desktop Clients for the SBOM Drop Box interface for easy upload/download l d of analysis data Science Traceability Matrix for requirements capturing 27

28 File Browser Interface Ease of Use: Engineers were used to storing their models on shared drives Wanted a mechanism to store and retrieve data as easy as accessing a shared drive 28

29 Science Traceability Matrix The Science Traceability Matrix is NASA s way of capturing and categorizing mission requirements Typically done in Excel spreadsheets We developed a live application that links individual requirements to analysis models 29

30 Analysis Tool Integration Analysis tool integration ti implements the concept of a Linked Model Environment developed earlier at companies like GE Central to analysis tool integration is the geometric representation of the artifact (CAD model). Many downstream applications are consumers of geometry. Tagging geometric entities with information needed d by downstream applications facilitates tool integration Both tight coupling and loose coupling solutions were developed Tight coupling leverages the respective tools APIs and is code specific Loose coupling leverages third-party integration tools, e.g. Comet (Comet Solutions), isight/fiper (Dassault) or ModelCenter (Phoenix Integration) 30

31 Tight Coupling: SolidWorks-STK SolidWorks (SW) is the primary CAD tool in use at the MDC Satellite Toolkit (STK) is used for orbit and mission simulation STK needs geometric information that is resident in SW (solar panels, their articulation, a tessellated representation of the outer shell of the satellite, mass properties, material properties, etc.) 31

32 Solidworks to STK Tight coupling approach works with the tools API Here, we developed an STK exporter inside SolidWorks Standard SolidWorks look and feel, user does not have to learn a new tool Requires software development and maintenance 32

33 Solidworks to STK (ct d) 1. CAD designer downselects in the assembly tree the components to be exported to STK 2. CAD designer defines the solar panel group(s) for STK 3. CAD designer defines articulations of the solar panel group(s) 33

34 Solidworks to STK (ct d) 4. CAD designer saves STK model file 5. Satellite analyst reads model file into STK 34

35 Loose Coupling Using Comet The Comet integration ti framework by Comet Solutions builds on the so-called Abstract Engineering Model It creates a layer of abstraction between the CAD model and the downstream engineering i analysis or meshing tool This layer of abstraction, or AEM, builds on the notion of entity tagging One instance of geometry is easily replaceable by another instance carrying similar tags, even if the geometry itself is significantly different Comet had been successfully applied to a number of satellite design applications 35

36 Satellite Thermal Analysis Satellite thermal analysis required complete rebuilding of the geometry inside the thermal analysis tool (Thermal Desktop) Using the Comet framework, we developed a seamless process that t guarantees data consistency across the tools The thermal mesh is generated by Comet s own meshing tool 36

37 Detailed Geometry The detailed d geometry contains too much detail not needed d for thermal analysis This geometry is associatively simplified to the appropriate level of fdetail 37

38 Preparing the CAD Model Small features not necessary for thermal analysis suppressed/hidden Geometry tagged with Comet tagging engine The tags are used by the thermal analysis model generation process to apply thermal loads and boundary conditions Geometry for thermal analysis 38

39 Thermal Analysis Mesh Thermal analysis mesh linked to geometry via the AEM 39

40 Modeling of Thermal Contacts Thermal contacts t are automatically ti applied based on the tags stored in the AEM 40

41 Thermal Results Thermal analysis results can be displayed d in Comet s post-processing tool or directly through the native postprocessor of Thermal Desktop 41

42 Summary A simulation data management solution based on Aras Innovator was developed for NASA The concept of a Simulation Bill of Material was introduced, linking all engineering i analysis models and data to the mission i design project Engineering analyses and their driving requirements were linked Automated user notification was implemented to alert users when their models are possibly out of date Ease of use was a key design driver as engineers don t like the overhead oftentimes associated with a PLM solution Both tight and loose coupling solutions for engineering analysis models were successfully implemented Contact Information: Dr. Peter Rohl Engineering Mgr, PI Peter.Rohl@AdvatechPacific.com Phone: x580 42

43 Acknowledgment This work was sponsored by NASA through SBIR Phase II Contract #NNX09CA16C. Contact Information: Dr. Peter Rohl Engineering Mgr, PI Phone: x580 43