23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-1.1.1

A PROBABILISTIC METHODOLOGY FOR THE TREATMENT OF SYSTEM-OF-SYSTEMS PROBLEMS AND APPLICATION TO FUTURE AIR TRANSPORTATION ARCHITECTURES

D. Delaurentis, H. Pfaender, D. Mavris, D. Schrage
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Keywords: probabilistic design, system-of-systems, uav, package delivery

In this paper, a problem is studied that extends the motives and goals of multi-“discipline” analysis and design to multi-“system” analysis and design. This transition is important since aerospace engineers and designers are increasingly being posed with “system-of-systems” type problems.. An extension to a novel methodology for conducting design trade-offs is presented, representing a critical part of the system engineering process. The new extension is probabilistic in nature and proceeds under the assumption that both requirement ambiguity and technology uncertainty play a key role in the early design exploration of system-of-systems problems. To simulate the interplay between requirements and technologies, a system-of-systems synthesis capability is needed, to serve in much the same capacity as sizing routines serve in aircraft design. System dynamics modeling, especially including causal loop analysis, is employed for this purpose by representing interaction mechanisms between heterogeneous systems. After an introduction to the problem and a brief survey of related fields, a detailed description of key elements of a new system-of-systems conceptual design method is presented. An example application problem is introduced as the method is presented to further illustrate the approach. This problem involves the design of a package delivery architecture utilizing autonomous, vertical take-off and landing air vehicles.

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