(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-11-09)
Armstrong, Michael James
With the current increased emphasis on the development of energy optimized vehicle systems architectures during the early phases in aircraft conceptual design, accurate predictions of these off-nominal requirements are needed to justify architecture concept selection. A process was developed for capturing architecture specific performance degradation strategies and optimally imposing their associated requirements. This process is enabled by analog extensions to traditional safety design and assessment tools and consists of six phases: Continuous Functional Hazard Assessment, Architecture Definition, Load Shedding Optimization, Analog System Safety Assessment, Architecture Optimization, and Architecture Augmentation.
Systematic off-nominal analysis of requirements was performed for dissimilar architecture concepts. It was shown that traditional discrete application of safety and reliability requirements have adverse effects on the prediction of requirements. This design bias was illustrated by cumulative unit importance metrics. Low fidelity representations of the loss/hazard relationship place undue importance on some units and yield under or over-predictions of system performance.