Towards the automation of concurrent space systems conceptual design through multidisciplinary design optimization
Ronan Arraes Jardim Chagas1; Bráulio Fonseca Carneiro de Albuquerque1; Rafael Anderson Martins Lopes1; Fabiano Luis de Sousa1
1 Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais
doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0596
Resumo
The development of space systems is a complex multidisciplinary endeavor. It is carried out in a sequence of phases, which comprises the main activities of conception, development and operation, including closeout. In the conception phase, the construction of engineering candidate solutions for the mission architecture elements, such as the payload, spacecraft bus, orbit and ground segment, is carried out by a team of engineers with the main aim of finding at least one viable candidate, in terms of performance, cost and schedule, which meets the mission primary objectives. In recent years concurrent engineering methods have been applied very successfully for decreasing the time, and at the same time increase the technical quality, when building conceptual solutions during Phase 0 of the development of new space systems. One of the key components of such approach is the use of discipline models integrated in such a way that information generated by a discipline is delivered to others that depend on that information as soon as it is available. These models may be codified in tools such as spreadsheets, in house or commercial software packages, data bases, or a combination of them. The use of optimization methods coupled to the discipline models can further improve the efficiency of building the candidate conceptual solutions, either in time as well as in quality. In the first case by making automatic the process of generating candidate solutions, and in doing so, in the second case, significantly improving the exploration of the design space, and hence the probability of finding better solutions. In this paper the potential of such approach is investigated through a case study where design parameters of the payload, propulsion subsystem and orbit, such as spacecraft mass, orbit inclination and height, camera field of view, spatial resolution, revisiting time and propellant mass, of a hypothetical Earth observation spacecraft, are taken into account simultaneously.
Palavras-chave: Concurrent engineering; Multidisciplinary design optimization; Space mission design; Spacecraft design; Optimization