TROY, Mich., - Altair in Troy, Mich. announced it has acquired Research in Flight in Auburn, Ala. Research in Flight is the maker of FlightStream, which provides computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software with a large footprint in the aerospace and defense sector.
FlightStream, a flow solver designed to bridge the gap between high-fidelity CFD simulations for early-stage design iterations and aerodynamic studies.
"FlightStream's integration into our portfolio enhances our offering with its specialized, modern, and efficient approach to meet the increasingly complex demands of aerospace, defense, and related industries," stated James R. Scapa, Altair's founder and CEO. This move comes amidst the company's accelerated growth in these sectors, including the emerging urban air mobility and eVTOL sectors.
FlightStream facilitates rapid analysis of unconventional aircraft configurations, offering capabilities for both powered and unpowered setups. Its features include surface vorticity, flow-separation, and viscous analysis, alongside integral boundary layer modeling for capturing viscous effects with high detail. These attributes contribute to a more comprehensive aerodynamic performance analysis, aiding design optimization efforts.
Co-founder of Research in Flight, Vivek Ahuja, expressed pride in FlightStream's role as a standard tool for aircraft designers and emphasized the benefits of joining Altair in scaling their reach to engineers seeking powerful design tools.
Research in Flight, the developer of FlightStream, was co-founded by Roy Hartfield, an aerospace engineering professor at Auburn University with over 30 years of experience in aerodynamics and aircraft research.
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FlightStream, already approved for use by the United States Air Force and employed at NASA Ames and Langley Research Centers, will be integrated into Altair's HyperWorks design and simulation platform, available via Altair Units.
