Engineering Services

Our software was used throughout the almost three-year NASA project to optimize the design, weight, and manufacturability of the CCM; which is constructed of honeycomb sandwich and solid laminate composites.

The 16.4-ft diameter Orion titanium orthogrid heat shield carrier mounted pressure vessel faces intense pressures during launch, reentry, and splashdown loads, and temperatures greater than 4,800° F.

“In a full run, the software calculated and sifted through about one billion margins for the model,” says Fernandez. Collier Aerospace “was critically important to organize and present this staggering amount of data.”

To meet the aggressive V-280 schedule, Collier Aerospace’s software was employed in a ‘design-by-analysis’ approach that successfully sized and analyzed the fuselage structure.

The designers of Stratolaunch faced a daunting task six years ago when they set out to conceive an aircraft that could fly to the stratosphere and release a reusable rocket that would blast into orbit payloads of 250,000 kilograms.

Sierra Nevada engineers used Collier Research software for sizing optimization of composite structures for the NASA-contracted cargo-resupply vehicle. The first mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is in 2020.