Next Generation Toolset for Weapons Separation Evaluation

Air-launch weapon system store separation dynamics need to be fully characterized to ensure safety and weapon controllability during the separation phase. The current 6-DOF weapon separation tools used by the NAVAIRÆs Store Separation Branch are NAVSEP and FLIP. These legacy tools lack commercial-grade software development, documentation, support, and upkeep, nor can they take full advantage of modern computational capabilities or easily integrate into modern workflows. These limitations have made it difficult for weapon separation design teams to keep pace with the advancement in complexity of air-launch weapons systems and aircraft platforms. Ā Ā SpaceWorks proposes to develop a new Aircraft Store Separation Evaluation Toolset (ASSET) using state-of-the-art computer program methods and software utilities as a replacement to NAVSEP and FLIP. This toolset will be developed in modern programming languages and built from the ground up to take advantage of todayÆs multithreaded high performance computing architectures, with built-in capabilities to perform batch execution and design studies. This new toolset will be a commercial-grade software product with thorough documentation, ongoing maintenance, and technical support. During the Phase I, SpaceWorks created proof-of-concept software executables for three key components of the envisioned software product: (1) a 6-DOF equations-of-motion solver demonstrating store dynamics propagation; (2) a miss distance calculator demonstrating two-body geometry proximity calculations; and (3) a visualization tool in Unreal Engine 5 demonstrating integration of CAD geometry files, animation of store separation, and user interface capabilities. At the conclusion of Phase I, SpaceWorks created a development roadmap for the integrated software package to be developed under this Phase II effort.