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REDUCING THE TIME AND COST OF TESTING ENGINES
TRANSPORTATION
ORIGINATING TECHNOLOGY/NASA CONTRIBUTION
Producing a new aircraft engine currently costs approximately $1 billion, with
3 years of development time for a commercial engine and 10 years for a military
engine. The high development time and cost make it extremely
difficult to transition advanced technologies for cleaner, quieter, and more
efficient new engines. To reduce this time and cost, NASA created a vision
for the future where designers would use high-fidelity computer simulations
early in the design process in order to resolve critical design issues before
building the expensive engine
hardware.
To accomplish this vision, NASA’s Glenn Research Center initiated
a collaborative effort with the aerospace industry and academia to develop
its Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS), an advanced engineering
environment for the analysis and design of aerospace propulsion systems and
components. Partners estimate that using NPSS has the potential to dramatically
reduce the time, effort, and expense necessary to design and
test jet engines by generating sophisticated computer simulations of an aerospace
object or system. These simulations will permit an engineer to “test” various
design options without having to conduct costly and time-consuming real-life
tests. By accelerating and streamlining the engine system design analysis and
test phases, NPSS facilitates bringing
the final product to market faster.
NASA’s NPSS Version (V)1.X effort was a
task within the Agency’s Computational Aerospace Sciences project of the High
Performance Computing and Communication program, which had a mission to accelerate
the availability of high-performance computing hardware and software to the
U.S. aerospace community for its use in design
processes. The technology brings value back to NASA by improving methods of
analyzing and testing space transportation components.
PARTNERSHIP
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Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS) Version 1.X serves as an object-oriented
design code for aerospace engineers to analyze
military, rocket, and commercial jet aircraft
engines. |
Wolverine Ventures, Inc., of Jupiter, Florida, signed a Space Act Agreement with
NASA, sponsored by the Aerospace Propulsion and Power
project under the
Vehicle Systems program, enabling the company to commercialize
NPSS V1.X. As part of the agreement, NASA Glenn and
Wolverine
jointly provide access and services for NPSS
V1.X.
PRODUCT OUTCOME
NPSS V1.X is emerging as the U.S. standard for aerospace
simulations. Serving as an object-oriented design code
for aerospace engineers to analyze military, rocket,
and commercial jet aircraft engines, the tool provides
engineers with unprecedented capability, levels of
interoperability,
and ease of use. Wolverine Ventures and Glenn have
put together two packages for NPSS V1.X that are available
to universities and the general business community.
In addition to delivering the software and documentation,
Wolverine Ventures provides maintenance and support
to users, and assists in the conversion and development
of NPSS V1.X components, models, and utilities. The
company develops software for interfacing NPSS V1.X
with customer applications, and it offers various levels
of training for its customers.
NPSS V1.X offers key
technological advances in designing aircraft engines
and enhancing the U.S. aerospace industry’s competitiveness
in the global marketplace. Using this technology, companies
estimate a 55-percent reduction
in the time to perform engine system simulation throughout
the product life cycle. This translates into a projected
annual savings to the aircraft industry of over $50
million a year from increased productivity. Companies
could see a 50-percent improvement in the way they
do business with industry partners and customers.
NPSS
V1.X is not limited to aerospace engine applications.
Any system, component,
or process that can be modeled mathematically can take
advantage of its capabilities, opening up the possibility
for applications in the transportation, automotive,
fuel cell, ground-based power, water treatment,
and biomedicine industries.
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