Product enhancement and the focused extension of the product portfolio is a major issue for software development company. Participation in international and national research projects helps to stay on the leading edge in the fields of interest. Exploratory developments carried out in the framework of international research projects are taken up by SMR, the goal being their commercialization.

Recent projects at SMR include coupled aero-thermal simulations of the reentry phase of a space test vehicle (ESA project), as well as developments with SMR's products, such as the common mesh refinement method and mesh deformation techniques for coupled simulations.

Submodelling Framework

The submodelling framework tool allows for generating FE meshes and boundary conditions of thin-walled structures, such as airplane components. Starting from a surface description, the tools can generate shell, solid, or mixed shell and solid FE models, with special emphasis on composites. Figure shows a FE mesh of an aluminum fuselage barrel section with stringers and frames.

Mesh Based Coupling

The L₂ minimization coupling method allows for fluid/structure coupling and is more accurate than other methods. It also works with other coupling procedures, such as non-matching interfaces (global-local coupling of FE computations, non-matching component mode synthesis, stringer-to-shell coupling, tying).

ALaSCA (FP7 Research Project)

Study of Aluminum-Composite interfaces for lattice-based novel aircraft structures. Picture to the right: 3m aluminum monococque (blue) and 3m composite (red) fuselage barrel. The skew hat stringers are placed both on inner and on outer side of the shell. Frames and hat stiffeners are modeled with beam elements. The skin consists of triangular shell elements. Shell and beam elements are compatible.

COCOMAT (FP7 Research Project)

Study of buckling and post-buckling behaviour of composite laminated shell structures. Within COCOMAT, SMR performed static and implicit transient post-buckling calculations with B2000++. A damage and degradation model for in-plane failure was added to B2000++. See presentation at the Fifth Community Aeronautics Days, Vienna, 2006. The video shows a panel deformation under very slow dynamic edge shortening (3 mm in 30 sec). Graph plots edge reaction force as function of time.