GENOA Software

GENOA is an integrated engineering software suite by AlphaSTAR Corporation for virtual testing of material structures involving composites and metals. Integrating diverse structural analysis and design modules, it is known for cost effectiveness in predicting strength, reliability and durability of aerospace structural components at the design stage with minimal experimental testing. It is mainly used for designing and manufacturing advanced aerospace and automotive products.
GENOA augments commercial Finite Element Analysis (FEA) packages by providing its popular Progressive Failure Analysis (PFA) capability. It can investigate structural responses to material degradation from damage induced by static, cyclic (low and high cycle fatigue), impact, Power Spectrum Density (PSD) and thermal loading. GENOA's PFA also accounts for the effects of manufacturing flaws, residual stresses, moisture and temperature.
A wide range of material systems can be handled with GENOA such as metals, ceramics, and advanced composites, including Polymer Matrix Composites (PMC) and Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC). The software is unique in that it can analyze not only traditional 2-D tape and fabric laminate lay-ups, but also 3-D weaves and braids. Different weave and braid architecture can also be considered.
Supported File Formats
GENOA is a complementary solution to the analysis environment where it is designed to work with other mainstream software packages such as ANSYS, ABAQUS, and NASTRAN. The user simply prepares a Finite Element Model in their preferred software and imports the final model into GENOA for further analysis.
Solvers
GENOA allows a complete integration with the most popular FEA formats in the analysis market today. Whether importing from ABAQUS, ANSYS, NASTRAN or the user wants to try an analysis with a different commercial solver (ABAQUS, ANSYS, NASTRAN, MARC, MHOST, LS-DYNA), GENOA gives the freedom to be flexible with the analysis.

Product Modules
GENOA is a modular software dealing with linear and non-linear technology. The software suite integrates the following variety of modules:
* Progressive Failure Analysis (PFA) is an integrated structural analysis/design software that predicts strength, reliability and durability of structural components at the design stage with minimal experimental testing support.
* Progressive Failure Dynamic Analysis (PFDA) performs progressive failure analysis on composite structures using an explicit transient dynamic algorithm.
* Virtual Crack Closure Technique (VCCT) is fracture mechanics based approach for progressive crack growth analysis based on a linear spring assumption. VCCT is applicable to linear elastic materials.
* Discrete Cohesive Zone Model (DCZM) is fracture mechanics based approach for progressive crack growth analysis based on a bi-linear spring assumption. DCZM can be used to model material softening.
* Complex Unit Cell with Interface Modeling incorporates a slice-by-slice sub structuring technology from laminate to ply, to sub-ply, and then to fiber and matrix interface.
* Material Constituent Analysis (MCA) is a 2D/3D composites (i.e., Laminated, Woven, and Stitched) analyzer, that was originally developed at NASA/Glenn Research Center.
* Material Uncertainty Analysis (MUA) combines composite micro-mechanics and probabilistic analysis to evaluate composite material reliability from the scatter of measured fundamental primitive variables.
* Material Characterization Optimization (MCO) is an integrated material characterization/optimization tool that can reverse-engineer structural and material behavior.
* Filament Winding (FW) designs and analyzes composite over-wrapped pressure vessels (COPV's). It is based on advanced NASA composite mechanics codes combined with a special module for filament winding analysis.

* Fracture Toughness Determination (FTD) incorporates fracture mechanics of ductile materials (extended Griffith Theory) to calculate the fracture toughness (KIC).
* Fatigue Crack Growth (FCG) determines the fatigue crack growth rate properties for ductile materials (<math>da/dN</math> versus ΔK) using input from various sources—including virtual testing done in GENOA's FTD module.
Software Specifications
GENOA utilizes Java and Java3D for the Graphic User Interface (GUI) and stand-alone Fortran/ compiled executables for analysis. As of 2007, GENOA runs on Windows 2000, Windows XP and Linux platforms.

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