Open Source Software Framework for Applications in Aeronautics and Space

Doreen Seider IEEE Aerospace Conference 05/03/2012, Big Sky, MT, USA

> Open Source Software Framework for Applications in Aeronautics and Space > Doreen Seider > 05/03/2012 www.DLR.de • Chart 1

Motivation for Framework

- Beginning: Collaborative and distributed design and simulation environment for shipyard industry

- Experience: Form software technology side of view many requirements in common with aerospace software projects

- Why not design a framework as base system that fits all?

- Idea was born: Software framework RCE (Remote Component Environment) poviding frequently needed functionalities as software components

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Design and Simulation Environments

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Source: Ilan Kroo

Identified Common Requirements

- Distribution: provide capability to realize distributed software.

- Data Management: provide management for scientific data.

- Privilege Management: provide user management with authentication and authorization support.

- Workflow Engine: provide environment for coupling of tools to automated compute workflows.

- Graphical User Interfaces: provide general-purpose elements.

- Platform Independence: executable on different operating systems.

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Software Framework RCE

- Built on top of Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP)

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Provided Functionality by RCE

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Application in Aeronautics: Chameleon - DLR develops Chameleon to support multidisciplinary projects in

aeronautics fields

- I.e. engineers of different disciplines work towards a common design of a new aircraft

- Chameleon focusses on collaborative simulation (automated compute workflows) in preliminary aircraft design

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Application in Aeronautics: Chameleon - Architecture on top of RCE: Re-use and specified new implementations

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Application in Aeronautics: Chameleon

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Application in Space: Virtual Satellite - DLR develops Virtual Sattelite to target needs in an Concurrent

Engineering Facility (CEF) during early phase studies of planning new spacecrafts

- I.e. engineers in one room with workstations gaining good and reasonable idea of planned spacecraft

- Virtual Satellite supports handling of the desing data distributed over all involved workstations

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Application in Space: Virtual Satellite - Architecture on top of RCE: Re-use and specified new implementations

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Application in Space: Virtual Satellite Screenshot

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Open Source Strategy of RCE - At DLR we develop software to support research and development

activities and rarely for pure selling purposes

- Business model differs from vential software companies: development is mostly done within research projects

- Challenge: Convince project partners and public institutions (funding) to develop a specified software or re-use and extend an existing one

- Decision to change RCE into an open source project was caused by this challenge, because non-commercial software get better acceptance in DLR research environment and beyond

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Future Work - Integration of further frequently used workflow components like optimizer

- Integration of knowledge of involved disciplines to enable user (experts) of

one discipline to create simulation involving foreign disciplines

- Gather provenance (history) of involved data and deduce information out of it – as it is more and more a requirement to retrace the becoming of a aircraft design

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Contact Doreen Seider (Doreen.Seider@dlr.de) Philipp Fischer, Markus Litz, Andreas Schreiber, Andreas Gerndt Simulation and Software Technology German Aerospace Center (DLR) Cologne/Brunswick, Germany http://www.DLR.de/sc

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