-ilities Tradespace and Affordability Project – Phase 3

One of the key elements of the SERC’s research strategy is transforming the practice of systems engineering and associated management practices – “SE and Management Transformation (SEMT).” The Grand Challenge goal for SEMT is to transform the DoD community’s current systems engineering and management methods, processes, and tools (MPTs) and practices away from sequential, single stovepipe system, hardware-first, document-driven, point- solution, acquisition-oriented approaches; and toward concurrent, portfolio and enterprise- oriented, hardware-software-human engineered, model-driven, set-based, full life cycle approaches.This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract H98230-08- D-0171 (Task Order 0031, RT 046).This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract H98230-08- D-0171 (Task Order 0031, RT 046)

System Qualities Ontology, Tradespace and Affordability (SQOTA) Project Phase 5

Motivation and Context: One of the key elements of the SERC's research strategy is transforming the practice of systems engineering and associated management practices- "SE and Management Transformation (SEMT)." The Grand Challenge goal for SEMT is to transform the DoD community 's current systems engineering and management methods, processes, and tools (MPTs) and practices away from sequential, single stovepipe system, hardware-first ,document-driven, point- solution, acquisition-oriented approaches; and toward concurrent, portfolio and enterprise-oriented, hardware-software-human engineered, model-driven, set-based, full life cycle approaches.This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract H98230-08-D-0171 and HQ0034-13-D-0004 (TO 0060).This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract H98230-08-D-0171 and HQ0034-13-D-0004 (TO 0060)

Tradespace and Affordability – Phase 1

One of the key elements of the SERC’s research strategy is transforming the practice of systems engineering – “SE Transformation.” The Grand Challenge goal for SE Transformation is to transform the DoD community’s current systems engineering and management methods, processes, and tools (MPTs) and practices away from sequential, single stovepipe system, hardware-first, outside-in, document-driven, point-solution, acquisition-oriented approaches; and toward concurrent, portfolio and enterprise-oriented, hardware-software-human engineered, balanced outside-in and inside-out, model-driven, set-based, full life cycle approaches.This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract H98230-08- D-0171 (Task Order 0031, RT 046).This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract H98230-08- D-0171 (Task Order 0031, RT 046)

System Qualities Ontology, Tradespace and Affordability (SQOTA) Project – Phase 4

This task was proposed and established as a result of a pair of 2012 workshops sponsored by the DoD Engineered Resilient Systems technology priority area and by the SERC. The workshops focused on how best to strengthen DoD’s capabilities in dealing with its systems’ non-functional requirements, often also called system qualities, properties, levels of service, and –ilities. The term –ilities was often used during the workshops, and became the title of the resulting SERC research task: “ilities Tradespace and Affordability Project (iTAP).” As the project progressed, the term “ilities” often became a source of confusion, as in “Do your results include considerations of safety, security, resilience, etc., which don’t have “ility” in their names?” Also, as our ontology, methods, processes, and tools became of interest across the DoD and across international and standards communities, we found that the term “System Qualities” was most often used. As a result, we are changing the name of the project to “System Qualities Ontology, Tradespace, and Affordability (SQOTA).” Some of this year’s university reports still refer to the project as “iTAP.”This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract HQ0034-13-D-0004.This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract HQ0034-13-D-0004

A Top-Down, Hierarchical, System-of-Systems Approach to the Design of an Air Defense Weapon

Systems engineering introduces the notion of top-down design, which involves viewing an entire system comprised of its components as a whole functioning unit. This requires an understanding of how those components efficiently interact, with optimization of the process emphasized rather than solely focusing on micro-level system components. The traditional approach to the systems engineering process involves requirements decomposition and flow down across a hierarchy of decision making levels, in which needs and requirements at one level are transformed into a set of system product and process descriptions for the next lower level. This top-down requirements flow approach therefore requires an iterative process between adjacent levels to verify that the design solution satisfies the requirements, with no direct flow between nonadjacent hierarchy levels. This thesis introduces a methodology that enables decision makers anywhere across a system-of-systems hierarchy to rapidly and simultaneously manipulate the design space, however complex. A hierarchical decision making process will be developed in which a system-of-systems, or multiple operationally and managerially independent systems, interact to affect a series of top level metrics. This takes the notion of top-down requirements flow one step further to allow for simultaneous bottom-up and top-down design, enabled by the use of neural network surrogate models to represent the complex design space. Using a proof-of-concept case study of employing a guided projectile for mortar interception, this process will show how the iterative steps that are usually required when dealing with flowing requirements from one level to the next lower in the systems engineering process are eliminated, allowing for direct manipulation across nonadjacent levels in the hierarchy. For this system-of-systems environment comprised of a Monte Carlo based design space exploration employing rapid neural network surrogate models, both bottom-up and top-down design analysis may be executed simultaneously. This process enables any response to be treated as an independent variable, meaning that information can flow in either direction within the hierarchy.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Dimitri Mavris; Committee Member: Daniel Schrage; Committee Member: E. Jeff Holder; Committee Member: Kevin Massey; Committee Member: Neil Westo

Development of an Integrated Parametric Environment for Conceptual Hypersonic Missile Sizing

Presented at the 2nd AIAA ATIO Forum, Los Angeles, CA, October 1-3, 2002.This paper outlines the method by which a graduate missile design team studying at Georgia Tech?s Aerospace System Design Laboratory (ASDL) created an environment that would link design parameters to vehicle metrics for the design of a High Speed Standoff Missile. The sizing and synthesis environment parametrically links multiple physics based disciplinary analyses, so that many aspects of the design can be studied simultaneously. That environment was then used to conceptually design a missile that best met the unobtainable requirements set by the customer. The process resulted in the conceptual design of a liquid fueled ramjet cruise missile that was compatible with the Vertical Launch System. The missile cruised at Mach 5, and was capable of striking targets up to 1462 km away

A Probabilistic Approach to the Conceptual Design of a Ship-Launched High Speed Standoff Missile

Presented at the AIAA 2002 Missile Sciences Conference, Monterey, CA, November 5-7, 2002.This paper focuses on the application of advanced design methodologies developed by Georgia Tech's Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) to the conceptual design of a hypersonic air-breathing ship-to-surface cruise missile. This approach uses an integrated, parametric environment, that brings more physics based knowledge into early phases of design, thus allowing the designer to have a thorough understanding of the entire design space. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and probabilistic methods allow the designer to then generate a field of designs, instead of just one point design. A High Speed Standoff Missile (HSSM) was required to deliver a 250-lb warhead to time critical targets with a stationary dwell time between five and fifteen minutes, at a range of up to 1,500 km. The primary drivers for a successful design were shown to be minimum time to target, affordability, and compatibility with the Vertical Launch System (VLS) currently used on many of the United States Navy's cruisers and destroyers. Included is an explanation of the physics based tools used to perform the various disciplinary analyses, and their use to construct metamodels allowing for design space exploration and robust design simulation, as well as a quantification of the uncertainty in the design parameters

Development of a Collaborative Capability-Based Tradeoff Environment for Complex System Architectures

Presented at the 44th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit 9 - 12 January 2006, Reno, Nevada.The design of complex systems in the presence of changing requirements, rapidly evolving technologies, and design uncertainty continues to be a challenge. Furthermore, the design of future platforms must take into account the interoperability of a variety of heterogeneous systems and their role in a larger "system-of-systems." To date, methodologies to address the complex interactions and optimize the system at the macro-level have lacked a clear direction and structure and have largely been conducted in an ad-hoc fashion. Traditional optimization has centered around individual vehicles with little regard for the impact on the overall system. A key enabler for reduced cost and cycle time is the ability to rapidly analyze technologies and perform trade studies using a capability-based approach. While many entities have expressed a desire to perform capability-based design, the need for a structured discipline exists. This research will examine how collaboration for the design of such systems-of-systems can be enabled through the use of surrogate models and will demonstrate a top-down analysis methodology for the evaluation of systems and technologies with respect to desired capabilities. A technique for inverse design where any variable can be treated as an independent variable is made routine through the structured use of surrogate models and probability theory. For the testbed demonstration, a depoliticized, notional scenario was postulated to develop a testbed environment in which humanitarian aid and supplies must be delivered to forward-deployed troops for dispersal in a host country under fire