Decision Support Tool for Concurrent Engineering in Space Mission Design

Abstract

The concurrent engineering (CE) approach has been successfully applied to the early design phase of space missions. During CE sessions, a software support is needed to allow multidisciplinary design data exchange. At the moment, a spreadsheet-based solution enhanced with macros is used at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to create a system model of a space mission during the early design phase. Now there is an increasing demand to take advantage of this system model and provide data analysis features which improve the decision making during CE sessions. Since the current approach is limited for such analysis, DLR has started developing a new tool called Virtual Satellite. It offers extended software support required by the Concurrent Engineering Facility of DLR in Bremen. On top of the previous spreadsheet functionalities, it provides means for online data analysis and system modeling. The results of these data analyses are presented to the discipline experts using different views which help in performing an early design optimization. In this paper, the impact of these views on the decision making during the AEGIS space mission study is presented as a proof of concept.

Knowledge Management tools integration within DLR's concurrent engineering facility

“…The Eclipse Modeling Framework is used to create the data model contained in the repository [8]. The architecture of the Virtual Satellite is shown in Figure 1 [9].…”

“…name, value and unit) and calculations to it. A common repository is created for the persistent and synchronized storage of collected design data using the version control system Subversion (SVN) [9]. A role management feature in the Virtual Satellite organizes access to the individual subsystems of the design.…”

Taking Advantage of the Model: Application of the Quantity, Units, Dimension, and Values Standard in Concurrent Spacecraft Engineering

“…Based on an agile approach and joint sessions that increase the common understanding for the design on system level are alternating with individual work where an expert can define a subsystem in more detail. Software tools like the Virtual Satellite (Deshmukh, et al 2013) from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) or the Integrated Design Model (Bandecchi, et al 2000) from the European Space Agency (ESA) provide the backbone to these studies. Within these tools the engineers can store and exchange important facts in a shared system model.…”

A formal method for early spacecraft design verification

“…In case of conflicting design ideas, trades among the involved disciplines are discussed and applied to the spacecraft design. Depending on their decisions the design changes frequently and also the requirements may change due to mission feasibility reasons [4], [5].…”

“…To assure that these parameters match the mission requirements, the software allows to set limits for individual parameters. Once a parameter is leaving its defined boundaries the software raises a warning to the whole design team [5]. This approach works well for parameters like mass which is often constant over time, but for other parameters like the power consumption it becomes more complex.…”