Development and application of NASTRAN structural optimisation solution sequence within the BAe ECLIPSE system

During the period 1970-1990 the Military Aircraft Division of British Aeros pace based at Warton developed a structural sizing and optimisation system initially based on an "in-house" developed finite element analysis (FEA) sy stem. This subsequently progressed to using NASTRAN, which was rapidly evol ving to be the standard FEA system used within all divisions of British Aer ospace (BAe). The many problems associated with the development and application of this e volving system are described. These problems covered a wide range from soft ware development. engineering application, resource management and hardware dependence. One problems which has received a great deal of attention since 1990 is the incorporation of the panel buckling constraint particularly when applied t o laminated structures. This paper describes an early attempt to incorporat e this constraint followed by a brief description of the application and in tegration of a specialised Panel Buckling code. The paper concludes by describing how BAe Military Aircraft Division is att empting to incorporate the buckling constraint using NASTRAN into a high pe rformance computing (HPC) environment. In addition this development illustr ates how many of the problems described earlier are being overcome by worki ng in partnership with software vendors, hardware vendors and other busines s units within BAe.