GDCD

The Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) at ESA ESTEC in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, is a state-of-the-art facility equipped with networking and teleconferencing tools that enable teams of experts from different disciplines to apply the concurrent engineering method to the design of future space missions.

The Grid-based Distributed Concurrent Design (GDCD) project showed the potential of Grid technology to support fully distributed concurrent design, while addressing practical considerations including network security, interoperability with other technologies required, and integration of legacy applications. Secure, distributed collaboration between different organizations is a key challenge in Grid computing. The GDCD project delivered a Grid-based demonstration Virtual Collaborative Facility (VCF) to ESA. The VCF allows domain engineers to use the concurrent design methodology in a distributed fashion to perform studies for future space missions.

Photo: ESA

The Grid-based Distributed Concurrent Design (GDCD) project showed the potential of Grid technology to support fully distributed concurrent design, while addressing practical considerations including network security, interoperability with other technologies required, and integration of legacy applications.

Secure, distributed collaboration between different organizations is a key challenge in Grid computing. The GDCD project delivered a Grid-based demonstration Virtual Collaborative Facility (VCF) to ESA. The VCF allows domain engineers to use the concurrent design methodology in a distributed fashion to perform studies for future space missions.

To demonstrate the interoperability and integration capabilities of Grid computing in concurrent design, we developed prototype VCF components based on ESA’s current Excel-based Concurrent Design Facility (a non-distributed environment), using a STEP-compliant database that stores design parameters. The database was exposed as a secure GRIA 5.1 Grid service, whilst a .NET/WSE3.0-based library was developed to enable secure communication between the Excel client and STEP database. For more information please download our paper on Cross-middleware Interoperability in Distributed Concurrent Engineering published in a recent IEEE conference.

The GDCD project successfully demonstrated that Grid technology can enable distributed concurrent engineering design to take place in a highly dynamic way.

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The GDCD project was funded by the European Space Agency under the General Studies Programme. The project was carried out by a consortium led by DATAMAT S.p.A. and including Thales Alenia Space France, Thales Alenia Space Italia S.p.A., Det Norske Veritas AS, Jotne EPM Technology AS and the University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre.