A PROBABILISTIC METHODOLOGY FOR THE TREATMENT OF SYSTEMOFSYSTEMS PROBLEMS AND APPLICATION TO FUTURE AIR TRANSPORTATION ARCHITECTURES

摘要

In this paper, a problem is studied thatextends the motives and goals of multi-'discipline' analysis and design to multi-'system' analysis and design. This transition isimportant since aerospace engineers anddesigners are increasingly being posed with'system-of-systems' type problems. Futureaviation transportation concepts, future packagedelivery architectures, and future air-trafficmanagement systems are three prime examplesof such emerging system-of-systems. Anextension to a novel methodology for conductingdesign trade-offs is presented, representing acritical part of the system engineering process.The new extension is probabilistic in nature andproceeds under the assumption that bothrequirement ambiguity and technologyuncertainty play a key role in the early designexploration of system-of-systems problems. Tosimulate the interplay between requirements andtechnologies, a system-of-systems synthesiscapability is needed, to serve in much the samecapacity as sizing routines serve in aircraftdesign. System dynamics modeling, especiallyincluding causal loop analysis, is employed forthis purpose by representing interactionmechanisms between heterogeneous systems. Inthis way, the sensitivities of overall system-ofsystemsresponses to both system and intersystemarchitecture variables can be computed.After an introduction to the problem and a briefsurvey of related fields, a detailed description ofkey elements of a new system-of-systemsconceptual design method is presented. Anexample application problem is introduced as themethod is presented to further illustrate theapproach. This problem involves the design of apackage delivery architecture utilizingautonomous, vertical take-off and landing airvehicles.