Open Source Aeronautical Engineering Tools

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I was reading through some of the papers and cites related to OpenMDAO and stumbled across a couple interesting papers[1, 2] on open source software in aeronautics.

Abstract: Open source software has become an alternative to commercial software for industrial users. Industrial users adopting to OSS and the underlying concepts need to consider changing their software development practices and organization in order to benefit from the OSS model. These changes may involve both technical and non-technical aspects. Openness and collaboration with a community are two non-technical concepts that may require such changes, while evaluating OSS products or evaluating different strategies for integrating OSS products are two technical aspects that may require adoption.

The objective of this paper is to create an awareness for the adoption of OSS in an industrial context. OSS can be used in different ways. Four categories of using OSS are presented by discussing motivation, implication and experience for each category. The main conclusion from this work is that organizations should have a realistic expectation of both the designated benefits and extension of organizational changes necessary to adopt to OSS. This conclusion is based on observations from industrial organizations using OSS, including OSS in the aeronautics industry, as well as from observations reported in the literature on open source.

The claim in the abstract that really caught my eye was that industrial users were using open source software for aeronautics applications. Here’s the list (given in Table 1 of [1]) of some open source aero tools:

AVL

aerodynamics, vortex lattice code

Calculix

finite element solver

CEASIOM

conceptual aircraft design (unfortunately MATLAB based)

Core RHSEG

image segmentation

Dakota

optimization, parameter estimation, sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification

Elmer

finite element solver

Growler

distributed object and event architecture

JSBSIM

flight dynamics model including fully configurable flight control system, aerodynamics, propulsion, landing gear arrangement, rotational earth effects on the equations of motion and output formats

OpenCASCADE

3D modeling and visualization

OpenFOAM

computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package for complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics and electromagnetics, also includes tools for meshing

OpenMDAO

multi-disciplinary analysis and optimization

OpenOpt

numerical optimization

pyOpt

numerical optimization

Scilab

numerical computing

TIPSOD

data visualization

Tornado

aerodynamics (unfortunately MATLAB based)

XFLR5

analysis tool for airfoils, wings and planes operating at low Reynolds Numbers

XFoil

interactive program for the design and analysis of subsonic isolated airfoils

To that list I would add:

PDAS

Public Domain Aeronautical Software, lots of oldies, but goodies

SU2

Stanford University Unstructured CFD code

OpenVSP

open source parametric aircraft geometry tool, vehicle sketch pad

BRLCAD

open source solid modeling system that includes interactive geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing for rendering and geometric analysis, image and signal-processing tools

FreeCAD

parametric 3D modeler

OpenSCAD

software for creating solid 3D CAD objects

HeeksCAD/CNC

3D CAD application with extensive CAM features

gmsh

3D finite element grid generator with a build-in CAD engine and post-processor

CGAL

Computational Geometry Algorithms Library, unstructured mesh generation capability

Many of the projects on the list are clearly academic, and I'm quite skeptical that they are used in a serious production environment which will have access to varied and capable commercial offerings. On the other hand, projects like OpenFOAM and JSBSIM are undoubtedly industrial-grade. Pretty impressive list of free software and associated capabilities nonetheless. Don't forget to keep an eye on code.nasa.gov for new projects too.

References

[1]   Ziemer, S., “On the adoption of open source software in aeronautics,” Aerospace Conference, 2012IEEE, 2012, pp. 1–10.

[2]   Ziemer, S., Hauge, O., Osterlie, T., and Lindman, J., “Understanding Open Source in an Industrial Context,” Signal Image Technology and Internet Based Systems, 2008. SITIS ’08. IEEE InternationalConference on, 2008, pp. 539–546.