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The 2014 FEMAP Symposium
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The 2014 FEMAP Symposium was held on May 15th and 16th
in Atlanta, Georgia. This was the second time a national FEMAP event had been
held. One of the highlights was listening to the keynote speaker, Mark McGinnis
from SGT, give a presentation on how FEMAP is used at NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center on the James Webb Space Telescope project. The James Webb Space
Telescope (JWST) is a large infrared telescope with a 6.5 meter primary mirror
that has a target launch date in 2018. JWST will observe the first luminous
glows after the big bang, and help us understand the evolution of our own Solar
System. FEMAP is used on the JWST project to do traditional loads modeling,
help the design and testing of the Science Instrument Module, and to help
calculate the on-orbit stability of the observatory due to thermal and jitter
effects.
We also heard about how NX NASTRAN was used to analyze the JWST
models, and the models were massive. Several FEMAP API’s were developed
to help extract displacement results from the large models, summing strain
energy by group to help with design improvements, and allow access to the full
16-digit grid locations to assure complete coincident grids on export, which is
critical when results are in nanometers. API’s were also created to
help export data to MATLAB for further processing, and to help automate
global-local modeling. It is great to hear Mark McGinnis talk about real
world modeling using FEMAP and NX NASTRAN, and the techniques used perform the
analysis.
Another highlight was hearing about the 2014 FEMAP roadmap, and
the new features being worked on for the FEMAP 11.1.2 and 11.2 releases.
During the developer round table, we got to talk one on one with the FEMAP
developers, and give suggestions for future enhancements. Most, if not
all, of the FEMAP development team have worked doing finite element analysis
before joining the FEMAP team, and they are always happy to get feedback from
the FEMAP users to help guide the future enhancements.
The FEMAP symposium was a success. It was a great two days of
interaction with other FEMAP users, and the FEMAP development team.
Labels: FEMAP, FEMAP Symposium, Saratech, Siemens