Kilgore will use the software to trim manufacturing costs through the reduction of rejected material during production and to improve reliability of its flares, which are designed to draw away heat-seeking missiles by mimicking the infrared engine signature of the aircraft from which they are deployed.

"We chose Algor after exhaustively researching just about every finite-element and finite-difference software package on the market, including those from ANSYS, COSMOS and MSC.Software," said Dr. Mark Driver, Director of Advanced Countermeasures Technology at Kilgore Flares.

"We needed a PC-based solution with flexible licensing options that could accurately model complex fluid and thermal phenomena and work seamlessly with our Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD models. Algor met these requirements and is easy to use, which enables our engineers to perform sophisticated multiphysics analyses without requiring an advanced degree in numerical analysis.

"These analyses will enable us to better understand our products' behavior, quantify the performance envelope, find solutions more quickly and save money by reducing the reject rate."

Many variables can affect the composition of a decoy flare, with environmental factors such as humidity and temperature potentially leading to the development of flaws during production. These variables influence a decoy flare's performance, ultimately determining whether or not it will accurately reproduce the target's infrared signature.

"We are using Algor's multiphysics tools to examine the behavior of the flare material in the manufacturing process," said Roger Doyle, a Modeling and Simulation Engineer in Kilgore's Advanced Countermeasure Technology group. "We expect these simulations will provide us with the data we need to codify the mixing of chemicals and produce flares of optimum quality with less experimentation."

Algor's wide range of simulation capabilities includes static stress and Mechanical Event Simulation (MES) with linear and nonlinear material models, linear dynamics, steady-state and transient heat transfer, steady and unsteady fluid flow, electrostatics, full multiphysics and piping.

These analysis capabilities are all available within a complete and easy-to-use interface, FEMPRO, which supports a wide range of CAD solid modelers and includes finite element meshing and model-building tools.

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