United States | 
NEi Nastran provides a wide range of industry-proven solutions for aerospace applications to evaluate and optimize many performance and reliability aspects of designs and manufacturing processes for shorter development cycles, reduced development costs, managed and reduced risk, improved quality and innovation.
NEi Nastran can provide analysis and simulation solutions for:
Full aircraft modeling, structure, engines, flight controls, landing
gear, and stores/devices- Full spacecraft modeling, structure and mechanisms, attitude dynamics, solar panels, and ground support equipment
- Structural and dynamic design and finite element analysis of composite structures including honeycomb panels, complex laminations and 3D micro models of joints, failure zones, etc.
- Linear and nonlinear simulations of large deployable space structures such as solar sails, space radars, and reflector antennas including, large displacement effects, pre-stress and low frequency vibration
- Performance assessment of various aircraft components, such as a bulkhead under pressurization, wing and skin panel buckling, and delamination of bonded joints
- Bird strike simulations
- Thermo-mechanical simulation of aircraft engines and rocket motors under different operating conditions
- Verification of turbine blade designs
- Simulation of various aircraft mechanisms such as landing gears, wing flaps, and cargo doors
- Fatigue and fracture mechanics assessment of aircraft fuselage and wing components
- Topology optimization of aircraft fuselage components
NEi Nastran product suite key benefits for aerospace applications
- Comprehensive interactive tools necessary for model creation, analysis monitoring, and results evaluation including a state-of-the-art analysis editor.
- Specialized industry-proven element technologies, including hybrid quad and hex elements and advanced tension-only shell and cable elements.
- High performance processing including advanced parallel PCG iterative, sparse direct, and block Lanczos solvers which allow solutions to large-scale models over 10 million degrees of freedom on inexpensive 32-bit Windows workstations as well as high end 64-bit Linux clusters. Tightly integrated with Femap.
- Robust contact capability using a 3D surface contact method which easily handles dissimilar meshes between components including frictional effects.
- Basic through advanced material models, including temperature dependent materials, non-linear elasticity and plasticity effects, creep, and thermo-elasticity.
- Substructuring and Model Reduction allows the creation and reuse of substructures to improve the efficiency of large analyses and provides a convenient method to transfer model data to subcontractors.
- Submodeling, allowing in-depth evaluation of particular regions.
- Load and Boundary Condition Interpolation allows mapping of thermal and CFD output from specialized heat transfer and fluid dynamic models to the structural model for load and boundary condition definition.
- Inertia relief capability allows the quasi-static simulation of forces acting on an unconstrained structure such as aircraft in flight or a submerged submarine.
- Multiple subcase capability provides a highly efficient technique to evaluate the response of structures to many different load cases and boundary conditions.
- Extensive composite material support, including, 2D orthotropic, 3D orthotropic, general anisotropic, laminate lay-up definitions, and a wide range of failure criteria.
- Advanced solution sequences, such as, linear and nonlinear static, transient dynamic, steady state dynamic, frequency extraction, heat transfer, and other analysis types, provide a choice of appropriate analysis types for different types of simulations.
- Integration with specialized fatigue applications, such as, Winlife, which is available as an add-on to the NEi Nastran product suite and also fe-safe, nCode, Falancs and FE-Fatigue.
Case Studies in Aerospace Industry
- WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo
- Business Jets by Cessna Aircraft
- Antenna Reflector by Milliflect Corporation
- James Webb Telescope by L'Garde
- Buckling Loads by Northwest Composites
- Star Antenna by L'Garde
- X-34 High Temperature Super Alloy
- Damage Assessment of Composite Structures by Monash University
Conference Papers
- A New Tool For Multidisciplinary CAE Simulations
- Finite Element Implementation of Advanced Failure Criteria for Composites