Can Do Everything Including Force-On-Force Scenarios, Long
Before Battle
Long before new military aircraft
are built, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation is saving time and
taxpayers' money by virtually proving digital prototypes inside
computer- generated wind tunnels and battle scenarios. To test how
a new aircraft will perform, Sikorsky relies on server and storage
solutions from Silicon Graphics.
A longtime SGI customer, Sikorsky recently deployed the SGI
solutions at its Bridgeport, CT, facility to support computer-aided
engineering design and analyses of current and future aircraft. The
project includes such vertical take-off and landing vehicles as the
US Navy's Heavy Lift Replacement helicopter, the US Army's UH- 60M
BLACK HAWK helicopter, the new Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR-X)
for the US Air Force, and aircraft for Canada's Maritime Helicopter
Program, and the new high speed X2 Technology(TM) demonstrator.
Shipped in June, Sikorsky engineers are armed with a
high-density SGI Altix 3700 Bx2 system powered by 128 Intel Itanium
2 processors and 512GB of memory, an SGI Altix 350 system with 32
processors and 64GB of memory, and a 9TB SGI InfiniteStorage
solution, which enables them to subject digital models of new
aircraft rotors or wings -- or even entire helicopters -- to the
type of forces they would encounter in flight. To do so, they
quickly access large data sets from the InfiniteStorage array and
run complex 2D and 3D electromagnetic calculations, computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite element analysis (FEA) studies with
the Altix system.
"Altix allows us to run operational
analyses, including force-on-force scenarios that the vehicle might
experience in a supply mission, a troop rescue effort, or a battle
situation," said Joseph Pantalone, Sikorsky technical fellow and
chief of Survivability and Low Observable Technology. "With Altix,
we can design, analyze, and model specific components and
subsystems, as well as the aircraft as a whole supporting numerous
air vehicle and system integration attributes."
"Highly detailed analysis of a helicopter rotor, propulsion, and
electromagnetic systems, reveal how the aircraft performs. We can
look at the systems individually to get comprehensive analytical
data of their components," said Pantalone. "Or we can look at how a
specific component performs as part of the overall aircraft system
as it is executing required flight maneuvers."
National security policies mandate that computing projects must
be conducted separately, so that no project mingles with another.
In the past, this meant that servers could run only one job at a
time. But SGI Altix allows Sikorsky engineers to separate the
system's CPUs and memory into different partitions, effectively
providing an entirely distinct platform for each job. This allows
engineers to have projects from multiple clients securely running
simultaneously -- and still separately -- on a single Altix
system.