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Spinoff story
Free Aerodynamic Simulation Code Supports Industry, Education
A real-world story of NASA technology finding a life beyond the mission.
About this technology
Overview
In the 1990s, what is now Glenn Research Center, the Air Force, and McDonnell Douglas cooperated to produce the versatile, publicly available Wind-US program for computational fluid dynamics, which predicts how aircraft surfaces will interact with air. Alan Cain, who worked on a precursor software at McDonnell Douglas, founded Chesterfield, Missouri-based Innovative Technology Applications Company (ITAC) based largely on his knowledge of the program and the problems it can solve. ITAC and others use Wind-US for free through software usage agreements.