A Systems-Theoretic Approach to Design of Early Concepts for Novel, Complex Systems in Aerospace

Abstract

The complexity of engineered systems has grown exponentially over the last forty years. One of the main challenges in modern engineering is managing this complexity, particularly as the pace of technological change continues to accelerate across industries. Traditional approaches to generating early concepts for novel, aerospace control-oriented systems typically employ a design-first approach, ignoring critical steps required to truly understand the intent and context of a new system. This tendency also leads to a focus on low-level, highly granular design activities that seek to integrate advanced technologies together for technology’s sake. Unfortunately, today’s applied early concept generation methods do not facilitate the effective generation of early system concepts and an initial high-level design for aerospace control systems. To address these shortcomings, this thesis proposes a systematic and rigorous framework to generate early system concepts using Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) principles and a new lens to examine system intent for a novel, complex system. This work also introduces a new level of abstraction for a portfolio-of-systems context and a method to propose an initial design artifact for new systems that is both architecture-agnostic and relevant during the earliest system engineering lifecycle activities. This method, Systems-Theoretic Concept Design, uses a top-down, three-phased approach to conduct mission analysis and determine the intent for a new system within a specific portfolio-level context. Upon building this intent model, the method enables the synchronization of stakeholder mental models through the use of transformation models built using the principles of Systems Theory. Finally, in its last phase, this early design concept generation framework delivers an initial design artifact that is technology- and requirements-agnostic in the language of Systems Theory using the semantics of STAMP. This initial design artifact is in the form of the Portfolio-of-Systems control structure, a control structure that frames a portfolio’s desired high-level capability as a control problem at a new level of abstraction while enabling analysis and examination of complex interactions across systems that may operate asynchronously or in geographically separated operating environments.