ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (Jan. 28, 2015) -- Army researchers working on advanced computer modeling won the 2014 Army Modeling and Simulation Award.
Nine employees of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command received the honor for their work as members of the Army Joint Multi-Role - Technology Demonstration Modeling and Simulation Team.
The JMR-TD is a science and technology advance technology demonstrator intended to inform the Army on the "art-of-the possible" for Future Vertical Lift. The joint effort would replace the aging U.S. military fleet with new aircraft that fills technology gaps. Modeling and simulation tools developed by the Army, NASA, and small business and applied by this Army team were used to assess capabilities of the designs proposed for the JMT-TD program. The team's work identified numerous key technology challenges ranging from configuration issues to interactional aerodynamics penalties.
For their work, the JMR-TD Modeling and Simulation Team received the Fiscal Year 2014 Army Modeling and Simulation Award for their support of the S&T JMR acquisition decision at Initial Design and Risk Review.
From the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center the team members are: Ernie Keen, Dr. Alex Moodie, Chris Silva, Dr. Mark Fulton, Dr. Hyeonsoo Yeo, Dr. Andrew Wissink, Rohit Jain, Mark Potsdam. Dr. Rajneesh Singh is from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
AMRDEC's Aviation Development Directorate led the team.
Modeling and simulation, commonly referred to as M&S, uses tools developed by the Army, NASA, and small business (Helios-Army, NDARC-NASA/Army, CAMRAD-Johnson Aeronautics) and were used to assess capabilities of the designs proposed for the JMT-TD program. The M&S work identified numerous key technology challenges ranging from configuration issues to interactional aerodynamics penalties.
The detailed analyses completed by this team provided the technical basis on aircraft performance for acquisition decisions on this S&T program, which is anticipated to have profound impact on the FVL program of record and future Army aviation.
There is, also, a workforce development aspect to the JMT-TD and FVL that address the lack of experience in the current Government workforce in the development of new aircraft. Both of these aspects are directly addressed by the work of this team.
The team is participating in the development of advanced aviation technology for the Army and getting real-world experience in the engineering of new built rotorcraft designs. It is further anticipated that the advanced modeling and simulation tools they are using will lead to better performing air vehicles for the DOD and the Nation.
Singh was responsible for aeromechanic evaluation of an aircraft configuration. This included identifying key technological challenges for the AVX's JMR-TD concept configuration and potential aerodynamic interactional penalties on the aircraft performance through modeling and simulations.
Singh developed models from contractor-supplied information. The models were executed on the Army Research Laboratory's high-performance computing resources.
"A greater speed, larger payload and endurance are some of the desired performance attributes of the JMR-TD aircraft configurations," Singh said. "The traditional single main rotor helicopter configurations like Blackhawk or Apache are not likely to meet the performance requirements. Therefore, the JMR-TD program will involve development of new configurations that will require addressing of several technological challenges."
Singh said the main products of the program are a demonstrated and refined set of technologically feasible and affordable capabilities, technology maturation plans, cost analysis for future capabilities, two demonstrator aircraft, and a mission systems demonstration.
AMRDEC 's Aviation Development Directorate has been a key participant in the JMR-TD program. The integrated product team consisted of a team of aerospace engineers from AMRDEC, ARL, NASA and the Navy who were organized to assess the feasibility of the claims included in the proposals and to serve as subject matter experts in the negotiations with the proposers. The assessment was performed using the state-of-art modeling and simulations tools of rotorcraft aeromechanics simulations.
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The Army Research Laboratory and Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center are part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to develop technology and engineering solutions for America's Soldiers.
RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command. AMC is the Army's premier provider of materiel readiness--technology, acquisition support, materiel development, logistics power projection and sustainment--to the total force, across the spectrum of joint military operations. If a Soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it, eats it or communicates with it, AMC provides it.
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