Zaero is an aeroelastics package by Zona Technologies, now part of Siemens. One of the original Zona products was ZONA51, a supersonic unsteady aerodynamic theory that was integrated into Nastran. This was useful to supersonic aircraft platforms, as the Doublet Lattice Method (DLM) was developed for the subsonic regime.
Like Nastran, Zaero is a solver, packaged as an executable. The user creates text based input files, which are interpreted and processed by the solver. Results are offered in a variety of formats based on the analysis, but generally reported in text based output files as well.
In comparison to Nastran, Zaero greatly expands on aeroelastic analysis utility and innovation. There are far more analysis types offered in Zaero. Some of these adopt more sophisticated techniques for aerodynamics (e.g. ZEUS), which is the field where much innovation has occurred since the development of unsteady panel theories like DLM. Not all of these advanced analyses may be necessary for every program.
Zona was a small independent company based in Arizona. They were acquired by Siemens in 2022 [1] [2]. As of 2025, there are still several training resources available on the originally company website (https://www.zonatech.com/), which are highly recommended.
Zona = company, now part of Siemens
Zaero = aeroelastics program with a range of features, most comparable to Nastran solutions for loads and flutter
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