A Resource Allocation Method for Achieving Optimal Reliability in a Lunar Architecture
Author(s)
Young, David A.
Wilhite, Alan
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Abstract
In January 2005, President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration. This
vision involved a progressive expansion of human capabilities beyond Low Earth Orbit
beginning with a return to the moon starting no later than 2020. Current design processes
utilized to meet this vision employ performance based trade studies to determine the lowest
cost, highest reliability solution. In these design processes, designers trade independent
performance variables and then calculate the design discriminators, reliability and costs, of
the different architectures. The methodology implemented in this paper focuses on a
concurrent evaluation of the performance, cost, and reliabilities of lunar architectures. This
process directly addresses the top level requirements early in the design process and allows
the decision maker to evaluate the highest reliability, lowest cost lunar architectures without
being distracted by the performance details of the architecture.
To achieve this methodology of bringing optimal cost and reliability solutions to the
decision maker, parametric performance, cost, and reliability models are created to model
each vehicle element. These models were combined using multidisciplinary optimization
techniques and response surface equations to create parametric vehicle models which
quickly evaluate the performance, reliability, and cost of the vehicles. These parametric
models, known as ROSETTA models, combined with a life cycle cost calculator provide the
tools necessary to create a lunar architecture simulation. The integration of the tools into
an integrated framework that can quickly and accurately evaluate the lunar architectures is
presented. This lunar architecture selection tool is verified and validated against the Apollo
lunar architectures. The results of this lunar architecture selection tool are then combined
into a Pareto frontier to guide the decision maker to producing the highest reliability
architecture for a given life cycle cost.
The advantages of this method over traditional design processes are numerous. With this
presented methodology, the decision maker can transparently choose a lunar architecture
solution based upon the high level design discriminators. This method can achieve significant
reductions in life cycle costs keeping the same architecture reliability as a traditional design
process point solution. This methodology also allows the decision maker to choose a solution
which achieves a significant reduction in failure rate while maintaining the same life cycle
costs as the point solution of a traditional design process.
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Date
2007-04
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