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Thankfully, the age of stand-alone fixed-input simulation tools is fading away in favor of more flexible and integrated solutions. “Concurrent engineering” once meant automating data translations between monolithic codes, but sophisticated users have demanded more native integration and more automated tools for designing, and not just evaluating point designs. Improvements in both interprocess communications technology and numerical solutions have gone a long way towards meeting those demands. This paper describes a small slice of a larger on-going effort to satisfy current and future demands for integrated multidisciplinary tools that can be highly customized by end-users or by third parties. Specifically, the ability to integrate fully featured thermal/fluid simulations into Microsoft’s Excel™ and other software is detailed. Users are now able not only to prepare custom user interfaces, they can use these codes as portals that allow integration activities at a larger scale.

Automated design space exploration was implemented and demonstrated in the form of the multidisciplinary optimization of the design of a space-based telescope. Off-the-shelf software representing the industry standards for thermal, structural, and optical analysis were employed. The integrated thermal/structural/optical models were collected and tasked with finding an optimum design using yet another off-the-shelf program. Using this integrated tool, the minimum mass thermal/structural design was found that directly satisfied optical performance requirements without relying on derived requirements such as isother-mality and mechanical stability. Overdesign was therefore avoided, and engineering productivity was greatly improved. This ambitious project was intended to be a pathfinder for integrated design activities. Therefore, difficulties and lessons learned are presented, along with recommendations for future investigations.

Thermal analysis is typically executed with multiple tools in a series of separate steps for performing radiation analysis, generating conduction and capacitance data, and for solving temperatures. This multitude of programs often leads to many user files that become unmanageable with their multitude, and the user often looses track as to which files go with which cases. In addition to combining the output from multiple programs, current processes often involve the user inputting various hand calculations into the math model to account for MLI/Insulation and contact conductance between entities. These calculations are not only tedious to make, but users often forget to update them when the geometry is changed. Several new features of Thermal Desktop are designed to automate some of the tedious tasks that thermal engineers now practice.