At SDC, composite product development of Tactical Missile systems begins with a close working relationship with the prime contractor. SDC takes the system level requirements and flows them down to the component and material level. Using these derived requirements, SDC uses its internal database and scans the industry for the best materials to do the job. SDC materials experience spans from metals, fiber reinforced organic and inorganic matrix composites and thermal management materials.

No matter if the program is a three week trade or a four year Systems Development and Demonstration (SDD) program, in general SDC engineering uses the same process to ensure that the customer's needs are met. Frequently, there is a meeting at the beginning of the project (formally referred to as a Quality Function Deployment (QFD) or Design for "X"), which brings all of the stakeholders into one room to review and prioritize the critical requirements, whether from a specification or derived, allows for solutions to be presented and reviewed and sets the stage for the next phases in the development process. This approach can dramatically increase the potential for project success.

SDC relies on the following engineering tools and analysis software to complete the job, including:

• System Engineering     •  Requirements Evaluation     •  Specification Writing • Detailed Design     •  Solid Modeling     •  Assembly Modeling     •  Tolerance Analysis     •  Detailed Drawings          (Class 1 to Class 3) • Finite Element Modeling and Analysis(IDEAS and NASTRAN)     •  Stress Analysis     •  Shock and Vibration     •  Thermal / Heat Transfer     •  Transient and frequency response • Composite failure/damage prediction using lamina theory

Analysis tools are also used for predicting performance of test configurations in order to validate analytical models.