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The Use of Pro/Engineer CAD Software and Fishbowl Tool Kit in Ray-tracing AnalysisThis document is designed as a manual for a user who wants to operate the Pro/ENGINEER (ProE) Wildfire 3.0 with the NASA Space Radiation Program's (SRP) custom-designed Toolkit, called 'Fishbowl', for the ray tracing of complex spacecraft geometries given by a ProE CAD model. The analysis of spacecraft geometry through ray tracing is a vital part in the calculation of health risks from space radiation. Space radiation poses severe risks of cancer, degenerative diseases and acute radiation sickness during long-term exploration missions, and shielding optimization is an important component in the application of radiation risk models. Ray tracing is a technique in which 3-dimensional (3D) vehicle geometry can be represented as the input for the space radiation transport code and subsequent risk calculations. In ray tracing a certain number of rays (on the order of 1000) are used to calculate the equivalent thickness, say of aluminum, of the spacecraft geometry seen at a point of interest called the dose point. The rays originate at the dose point and terminate at a homogenously distributed set of points lying on a sphere that circumscribes the spacecraft and that has its center at the dose point. The distance a ray traverses in each material is converted to aluminum or other user-selected equivalent thickness. Then all equivalent thicknesses are summed up for each ray. Since each ray points to a direction, the aluminum equivalent of each ray represents the shielding that the geometry provides to the dose point from that particular direction. This manual will first list for the user the contact information for help in installing ProE and Fishbowl in addition to notes on the platform support and system requirements information. Second, the document will show the user how to use the software to ray trace a Pro/E-designed 3-D assembly and will serve later as a reference for troubleshooting. The user is assumed to have previous knowledge of ProE and CAD modeling.
Document ID
20090017821
Acquisition Source
Johnson Space Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Nounu, Hatem N. (Houston Univ. TX, United States)
Kim, Myung-Hee Y. (Universities Space Research Association Houston, TX, United States)
Ponomarev, Artem L. (Universities Space Research Association Houston, TX, United States)
Cucinotta, Francis A. (NASA Johnson Space Center Houston, TX, United States)
Date Acquired
August 24, 2013
Publication Date
April 1, 2009
Subject Category
Computer Programming And Software
Report/Patent Number
JSC-CN-18247
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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