Verifying Interfaces and generating interface control documents for the alignment and phasing subsystem of the Thirty Meter Telescope from a system model in SysML

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method for verifying interfaces and generating interface control documents (ICDs) from a system model in SysML TM. In systems and software engineering, ICDs are key artifacts that specify the interface(s) to a system or subsystem, and are used to control the documentation of these interfaces. ICDs enable independent teams to develop connecting systems that use the specified interfaces. In the context of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), interface control documents also act as contracts for delivered subsystems. The Alignment and Phasing system (APS) is one such subsystem. APS is required to implement a particular interface, and formulates requirements for the interfaces to be provided by other components of TMT that interface with APS. As the design of APS matures, these interfaces are frequently refined, making it necessary for related ICDs to be updated. In current systems engineering practice, ICDs are maintained manually. This manual maintenance can lead to a loss in integrity and accuracy of the documents over time, resulting in the documents no longer reflecting the actual state of the interfaces of a system. We show how a system model in SysML TM can be used to generate ICDs automatically. The method is demonstrated through application to interface control documents pertaining to APS. Specifically, we apply the method to the interface of APS to the primary mirror control system (M1CS) and of APS to the Telescope Control System (TCS). We evaluate the newly introduced method through application to two case studies.

Documentation-as-code for Interface Control Document Management in Systems of Systems: a Technical Action Research Study

“…On the pure model-based end, the overall process is centered on a model about the system, from which documents like the ICDs are generated, when required, as a report. Examples in the context of SoS can be found in industries such as astronomy [17,7], space [8,29], and defense [28]. In these cases, with the exception of the defense industry, which has adopted the Unified Profile for DoDAF/MODAF (UPDM), SysML is seemingly the de facto formalism in model-based approaches [15].…”

Papyrus SysML-based model validation extension

“…customers, software engineers, electrical engineers). This language has been widely used in industry and academia, for example [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] citing only a few works. Eclipse Papyrus 10 is an industrial-grade, open-source, model-based engineering tool that has been successfully used in industrial projects and is already the base platform for several industrial modeling tools.…”

Cross-disciplinary Architecting of Systems of Systems - Bridging the Gap

“…On the pure model-based end, the overall process is centered on a model of the system, from which documents like the ICDs are generated, when required, as a report. Examples in the context of SoS can be found in industries such as astronomy [159,160], space [161,162], and defense [163]. In these cases, with the exception of the defense industry, which has adopted the Unified Profile for DoDAF/MODAF (UPDM), SysML is seemingly the de facto formalism in model-based approaches [164].…”