Highlights of the CREATE Program

Abstract

The Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) Program was established as a new 12-year program in FY 2008 by the Department of Defense (DoD). The CREATE goal is to enable major improvements in DoD's acquisition engineering design and analysis processes by developing and deploying scalable, multi-disciplinary, physics-based computational engineering software products for the design and analysis of DoD Ships, Air Vehicles, and Radio Frequency Antennas. Meshing and Geometry (MG) generation is being provided by a fourth project, MG. CREATE is a multi-institutional, multi-service, multi-agency and multi-disciplinary program with participation by the Navy, Air Force, Army, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, industry, and academia. The CREATE products are being developed and released on an annual cycle. In 2010, the program released five new products: SENTRI 1.0 -- RF antenna design; NESM 0.1 -- Ship Shock Analysis; IHDE 1.0 -- Ship Hydrodynamic Design and Analysis; Kestrel 1.0 -- Fixed-wing air vehicle analysis; and Helios 1.0 -- Rotorcraft analysis. Enhanced versions of these products will be released every year starting in 2011. In 2011, five additional products will begin annual releases: DaVinci -- a tool for the rapid physics-based design of air vehicles; RDI -- an integrated suite of tools to enable rapid physics-based design of naval ships; Firebolt -- components to provide models for gas turbine propulsion systems for Kestrel and Helios; NavyFoam -- a high- fidelity hydrodynamics analysis tool for predicting drag and resistance, sea-keeping and seaway loads; and Capstone -- components to enable the generation of geometries and meshes for all of the other products. The CREATE products are designed to be modular, maintainable, extensible, and scalable. To accomplish this, the CREATE team1 has developed a set of software engineering and software project management practices and processes that strike the appropriate balance between the agility and flexibility, and organizational structures and planning that are appropriate for developing complex physics-based, scalable and sustainable engineering software.