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NASTRAN is a general purpose finite element analysis (FEA) program, originally produced by NASA. Visualization of how a car deforms in an asymmetrical crash using finite element analysis. ...
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an agency of the United States Government, responsible for that nations public space program. ...
"General purpose" means that Nastran addresses a wide range of engineering problem-solving requirements (i.e. beam versus plate structures and various types of response such as statics or dynamics) as compared to specialty programs, which concentrate on particular types of analysis.
History
The 1964 annual review of NASA's structural dynamics research program revealed that the research centers were separately developing structural analysis software that was specific to their own needs. The review recommended that a single generic software program should be used instead. In response, an ad hoc committee was formed. The committee determined that no existing software could meet their requirements. They suggested establishing a cooperative project to develop this software and created a specification that outlined the capablilities for the software.[1]
A contract was awarded to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) to develop the software. The name of the program is an acronym formed from NAsa STRuctural ANalysis. The NASTRAN system was released to NASA in 1968. In the late 1960s, The MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC) started to market and support its own version of NASTRAN, called MSC/NASTRAN (which eventually became MSC.Nastran). 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ...
History Example of MSC.Nastran analysis at work. ...
The NASTRAN program has evolved over many versions. Each new version contains enhancements in analysis capability and numerical performance. In addition, many errors from previous versions are corrected. Today, NASTRAN is widely used throughout the world in the aerospace, automotive and maritime industries. It is considered the industry standard for analysis of aerospace structures.
Software Architecture NASTRAN is written primarily in FORTRAN and contains over one million lines of code. NASTRAN is compatible with a large variety of computers and operating systems ranging from small workstations to the largest supercomputers. Fortran (previously FORTRAN[1]) is a general-purpose[2], procedural,[3] imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. ...
In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ...
A computer workstation, often colloquially referred to as workstation, is a high-end general-purpose microcomputer designed to be used by one person at a time and which offers higher performance than normally found in a personal computer, especially with respect to graphics, processing power and the ability to carry...
A supercomputer is a device for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems. ...
NASTRAN was designed from the beginning to consist of several modules. A module is a collection of FORTRAN subroutines designed to perform a specific task—processing model geometry, assembling matrices, applying constraints, solving matrix problems, calculating output quantities, conversing with the database, printing the solution, and so on. Fortran (previously FORTRAN[1]) is a general-purpose[2], procedural,[3] imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. ...
Associated Software NASTRAN is primarily a solver for finite element analysis. It does not have functionality that allows for graphically building a model or meshing. All input and output to the program is in the form of text files. The view files graphically Algor provides a modeler called FEMPRO. Visualization of how a car deforms in an asymmetrical crash using finite element analysis. ...
Flavours of NASTRAN Currently there are numerous commercially available FEA products that are based on NASTRAN source code: - MSC.Nastran
- NX NASTRAN
- ALG NASTRAN
MSC Nastran MSC Nastran is the original commercial Nastran product started by Dr. Richard MacNeal. For many years, MSC maintained a monopoly on the NASTRAN source code, which ended in June 2003 by the purchase by EDS of the Nastran 2001 source code. In 2005 Algor released ALG Nastran, a far superior version from the makers of Algor.
NX Nastran NX Nastran resulted from the 2003 purchase of a royalty-free license for the software product MSC.Nastran by EDS, to the benefit of its UGS PLM Solutions division (now spun-off from EDS and called UGS). NX Nastran is based on the MSC.Nastran 2001 source code and is fully compatible with MSC.Nastran. The principal advantages of NX Nastran are lower price and a faster software development cycle. The principal disadvantage is it is old source code based on an older version of Nastran.
ALG Nastran ALG/NASTRAN is a complete NASTRAN solution for static stress with linear material models, steady-state heat transfer and natural frequency (modal) analyses. ALGOR’s NASTRAN product line also includes FEMPRO for NASTRAN, a FEMAP-alternative finite element modeling, results evaluation and presentation interface for third-party NASTRAN processors; and a series of NASTRAN-compatible extenders that enable ALGOR customers to add these new capabilities to their existing software.
Notes - ^ MacNeal, Richard H., page i., "The NASTRAN Theoretical Manual", December 1972
See also - NX Nastran at ugs.com: http://www.ugx.com/products/nx/simulation/advanced/nastran/
- MSC SimEnterprise which include MD NASTRAN: http://www.mscsoftwere.com/products/
- I-DEAS at ugs.com: http://www.ugx.com/products/nx/simulation/advanced/master_fem/index.shtml
- FEMAP at ugs.com: http://www.ugx.com/products/velocity/femap/
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