Engineering Resilience for Complex Systems

et al. 2020

Systems Engineering

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Increasing system complexity has provided the impetus to develop new and novel systems engineering methodologies. One of these methodologies is set‐based design (SBD), a concurrent design methodology well suited for complex systems subject to significant uncertainty. Since the 1990s, numerous private, public, and defense sector design programs have successfully implemented SBD. However, concerns regarding SBD's complexity, tendency toward qualitative methods, and lack of quantitative tools have limited its use. To address these issues, our research surveys 122 refereed journal articles and conference papers to assess SBD's state‐of‐practice and identify relevant research opportunities. To accomplish these tasks, we perform a structured literature review to identify and assess relevant and influential research. We found that SBD's state‐of‐practice relies heavily upon decision and tradespace analysis with increasing emphasis on uncertainty modeling and MBSE. We found that the majority of SBD research consists of quantitative methodologies focusing on component and small system applications. We also found that complex system applications used mostly qualitative methodologies. We identify SBD research opportunities for requirements development, MBSE, uncertainty modeling, multiresolution modeling, adversarial analysis, and program management. Finally, we recommend the development of a comprehensive SBD methodology and toolkit, suited for complex system design across all stages of the product development life cycle.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Set‐based design: The state‐of‐practice and research opportunities

Shallcross¹,

Parnell²,

et al. 2020

Systems Engineering

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“…A key feature of the decision analysis cycle is the incorporation of a process with an analytical method. We developed the Integrated Trade-Off Analysis Framework, shown as an influence diagram in Figure 3, to explore the design space for complex engineered systems and evaluate options to make systems more resilient [8]. The Integrated Trade-Off Analysis Framework built upon previous work by Parnell et al [5], which described how to perform an affordability analysis.…”

Section: Tradespace Explorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Design Space Exploration with Model-Based System Engineering and Set-Based Design

Specking

Parnell

et al. 2018

Systems

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Adequately exploring the tradespace in the early system design phase is important to determine the best design concepts to pursue in the next life cycle stage. Tradespace exploration (TSE) often uses trade-off analysis. Set-based design (SBD) methods, compared to traditional point-based design, explore significantly more designs. An integrated framework with model-based system engineering (MBSE) and a life cycle cost model enables design evaluation in near real-time. This study proposes an early design phase SBD methodology and demonstrates how SBD enabled by an integrated framework with MBSE and life cycle cost provides an enhanced TSE that can inform system design requirements and help decision makers select high performing designs at an affordable cost. Specifically, this paper (1) provides an overview of TSE and SBD, (2) describes the Integrated Trade-off Analysis Framework, (3) describes a methodology to implement SBD in the early design phase, and (4) demonstrates the techniques using an unmanned aerial vehicle case study. We found that the Integrated Trade-off Analysis Framework informs requirement development based upon how the requirements affect the feasible tradespace. Additionally, the integrated framework that uses SBD better explores the design space compared to traditional methods by finding a larger set of feasible designs early in the design process.

“…To incorporate ERS objectives, the three steps in red in Figure 2 have been identified as new steps to be added to the current AoA process. 5 Instead of considering a limited number of PBDs, the design space should be expanded by generating a large number of potential alternatives. This in turn could generate alternatives that would be more and less resilient then those generated using the PBD methodology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Incorporating Engineering Resilient Systems (ERS) into Analysis of Alternatives. 5 CREATE: Computational Research & Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments; KPP: Key Performance Parameter. (Color online only.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstrating set-based design techniques: an unmanned aerial vehicle case study

Small

Parnell

Journal of Defense Modeling & Simulation

et al. 2019

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The Engineered Resilient Systems research program seeks to improve decision making in the Analysis of Alternatives process by leveraging model-based engineering (MBE) early in the design process to develop more resilient systems. Traditional tradespace exploration using point-based design often converges quickly to an initial baseline design concept with subsequent engineering changes to modify the design. However, this process can lead to significant cost growth if the initial concept is not able to meet requirements or if the revised design is not affordable. Enabled by MBE, set-based design (SBD) considers sets of all possible design concepts and down-selects design concepts to converge to a final design using insights into design trade-off analysis, modeling and simulation, and test data. Using a notional unmanned aerial vehicle case study with low-fidelity physics-based models and an open source Excel® add-in called SIPmath©, this research implements an integrated MBE trade-off analytics framework that simultaneously generates numerous SBDs using parametric performance and cost models and evaluates the designs in the value and cost tradespace. In addition, this research explores incorporating resilience quantification and uncertainty into SBD trade-off analysis. Future research is needed to validate the use of SBD with low-fidelity models for tradespace exploration in early system design.