CFD Research Corporation is adding a talented transient dynamic finite element engineer to our growing structural analysis team. The candidate will evaluate high speed dynamic damage events in the time domain such as drops and bird strikes in aid of the design, verification and manufacture of aerospace structures. Experience with turbomachinery and rotordynamics is a plus.

The position is located at CFD Research's Huntsville Headquarters, where the candidate will work closely with existing structural, fluid and thermal analysis teams to provide rapid design recommendations and assessments. The candidate is expected to interface regularly with Prototype, Test and Evaluation Division engineers located at the company's Hollywood, AL Engineering Test Center. This will necessitate trips to Hollywood to support in-person meetings 3 times a month.

The potential exists for the aspiring candidate to help grow and eventually lead the burgeoning high fidelity structural analysis team. Proficiency with the established tool, LS-Dyna, is required. Experience with Abaqus Explicit is also desirable. The candidate should be familiar with running on a remote HPC cluster and submitting jobs to a bash scheduler.

Key responsibilities include the development and validation of time domain FEA models to analyze transient events such as drops, crashes, FOD strikes and other short duration impacts. The candidate shall produce engineering reports and documentation in support of requirement verification and design reviews.

Basic Qualifications:

• US Citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a secret security clearance
• Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering
• 6+ years hands on experience with FEA, and 2+ years experience using LS-Dyna
• Strong understanding of progressive damage modeling in FEA
• Familiarity with correlating model results and test data.
• Solid understanding of structural dynamics.
• Understanding of material behaviors including rate sensitives and advise or direct material testing procedures as necessary
• Knowledge of thermal–structural coupling
• Support root-cause investigations of field impact issues and propose corrective actions

Desired Qualifications:

• An active secret security clearance
• Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering
• Proficiency with Abaqus
• Experience with rotordynamics and associated analysis methods
• Background in applied metallurgy
• Familiarity with high-performance computing (HPC) and large-scale models
• Experience with python for post processing of tabular data or the creation of automation macros