National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research & Technology Transfer 2004 Program Solicitations
TOPIC X8 Systems Integration, Analysis, Concepts and Modeling
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X8.01 Technology-Systems Analysis and Infrastructure Modeling
X8.02 Design Technologies for Entry Vehicles
This topic addresses the development, deployment, and operation of methods, tools, and infrastructure providing new capabilities in NASA systems analysis, model-based design and acquisition, and decision support. This will include capabilities enabling the modeling of key system and infrastructure elements in support of analyses, concept and mission studies to inform future decisions on supporting technology research, enabling technology developments, and demonstrations and validations for emerging products.
X8.01 Technology-Systems Analysis and Infrastructure Modeling
Lead Center: JPL
Participating Center(s): ARC
The purpose of this subtopic is to advance capability in technology analysis and systems analysis. This includes the process, methods, and tools to characterize and model technology in terms of performance, risk and cost, and the means to exercise that knowledge in the context of system-wide trades and design. It also includes the quantification of suitable metrics and processes that optimize the overall development and integration of technology into flight units. This year’s solicitation will give priority to advancing this capability in the following areas:
- Methods for the conduct of impact studies against Design Reference Missions and/or other future system representations;
- Development of Trade Structures and methods for determining relative benefit, risk, and cost of the utilization of various technologies;
- Methods for assigning quantitative value to missions and/or sets of missions;
- Methods for modeling and quantifying technological capability and risk, and projections to the future including uncertainties;
- Means for overall prioritization and/or optimization of technological approaches for different resource allocations or other constraints; and
- Development of decision-based structures representing system and mission designs.
This subtopic will also focus on developing Model-Based Design/Model-Based Engineering (MBD/MBE) capabilities in order to provide effective full-phase, full-breadth mission and system models that could be exercised in a variety of design environments, trade studies, system and investment analysis efforts, and program and technology planning activities. It will address both the model development itself and the development of methods and structures necessary to exercise them effectively in system and mission design and operations environments. This will provide not only the basis to extend available commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) MBD/MBE capabilities, but also provide the means to evaluate infusion benefits and effects and relative costs for existing or future technologies.
Technical areas to address include:
- Model integration efforts, focused on methods for subsystem integration of disparate models, particularly non-physics-based models;
- Development and integration of risk models including uncertainty methods and propagation at the subsystem and system levels;
- Methods to evaluate model performance and validation to ensure agile evolution of the models, particularly as it affects or is affected by phase transition;
- Development and usage of MBD/MBE constructs in reviews;
- Construct development of technology models;
- Integration and validation of cost models, particularly addressing technology elements; and
- Integration of MBD/MBE constructs with mission design.
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X8.02 Design Technologies for Entry Vehicles
Lead Center: ARC
Participating Center(s): MSFC
Highly reliable, highly credible, highly efficient, and increasingly affordable design technologies are enabling and enhancing technologies for future human or robotic exploration missions. Innovative design technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures are solicited both to explore and support decisions about vehicles and missions. This subtopic solicits systems-level innovations and high-leverage technologies, derived from clear concepts of design operations to conduct conceptual design, preliminary designs and final design. Design tools need to be demonstrated with realistic entry vehicles.
The current entry vehicle design approach is time consuming, loosely coupled across disciplines, and of varying fidelity across various disciplines. The general approach that has been employed for the current generation robotic exploration entry vehicles starts with the selection of a simple forebody shape. Trajectory optimization and guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) are then used to establish the best robust trajectory, either based on heat flux and heat load or determined through Monte Carlo techniques, for the particular entry mission of interest. Finally, the thermal protection system (TPS) material selection and thicknesses are designed such that the given vehicle shape can withstand (with margins) the robust entry trajectory. While this design approach has been successful for current low mass robotic missions its usefulness for future missions is dependent on future mission requirements. In some cases, the approach may result in excessive margins in TPS weight or entry vehicle mass margin to yield a mission success.
Innovative, integrated, credible, rapid, efficient, and robust design technologies, which include simulation tools and processes, are solicited. The tools and processes with the appropriate modeling fidelity should be able to treat coupled multi-objective and multi-disciplinary design optimization incorporating uncertainty. Integrated design tools and processes are sought for entry systems that combine vehicle shape optimization, vehicle control design, trajectory optimization, thermal-structural responses, and thermal protection system material selection and thickness design. The disciplines that must be accounted for and integrated in these future entry vehicle design tools and processes are: aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics, TPS thermal stress analysis, thermal-structural analysis, GN&C, and trajectory. Technologies are sought for credibly predicting performance parameters and relevant physical quantities in relevant flight environments, after establishing the acceptable level of credibility of these parameters and quantities in test conditions. Design Technologies must be able to accommodate uncertainties and dispersions in atmospheric uncertainty, entry angle uncertainty, entry velocity uncertainty, aerodynamic uncertainty, vehicle mass uncertainty, aerothermal environments uncertainty, GN&C uncertainty, and material response uncertainty. Advanced risk assessment technologies are also solicited to determine mission risks and probability of Loss of Crew (LOC) and of Loss of Vehicle (LOV).
At the completion of the Phase I effort for this subtopic, the work performed will be evaluated (1) to validate the relevancy of the proposed effort (considering available, relevant Level 1 mission requirements); (2) to establish the technical merit and feasibility of the proposed innovation; and (3) to provide a basis for continued development in Phase II. The desired, innovative Phase I product is principally one or more of the following items: computational methods, processes, tools, analyses, conceptual designs, computer simulations, and trade studies. All computer simulations need to be presented with uncertainties to establish their credibility.
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