Spacecraft design optimisation for demise and survivability
Spacecraft design optimisation for demise and survivability
Among the mitigation measures introduced to cope with the space debris issue there is the de-orbiting of decommissioned satellites. Guidelines for re-entering objects call for a ground casualty risk no higher than 10-4. To comply with this requirement, satellites can be designed through a design-for-demise philosophy. Still, a spacecraft designed to demise through the atmosphere has to survive the debris populated space environment for many years. The demisability and the survivability of a satellite can both be influenced by a set of common design choices such as the material selection, the geometry definition, and the position of the components inside the spacecraft. Within this context, two models have been developed to analyse the demise and the survivability of satellites. Given the competing nature of the demisability and the survivability requirements, a multi-objective optimisation framework was developed, with the aim to identify trade-off solutions for the preliminary design of satellites. As the problem is nonlinear and involves the combination of continuous and discrete variables, classical derivative based approaches are unsuited and a genetic algorithm was selected instead. The genetic algorithm uses the developed demisability and survivability criteria as the fitness functions of the multi-objective algorithm. The paper presents a test case, which considers the preliminary optimisation of tanks in terms of material, geometry, location and number of tanks for a representative Earth observation mission. The configuration of the external structure of the spacecraft is fixed. Tanks were selected because they are sensitive to both design requirements: they represent critical components in the demise process and impact damage can cause the loss of the mission because of leaking and ruptures. The results present the possible trade off solutions, constituting the Pareto front obtained from the multi-objective optimisation.
design-for-demise, survivability, multi-objectiveoptimization, re-entry, space debris, debris impact, tanks
International Astronautical Federation
Trisolini, Mirko
5637d517-3e44-47d1-8575-9df804914449
Lewis, Hugh
e9048cd8-c188-49cb-8e2a-45f6b316336a
Colombo, Camilla
595ced96-9494-40f2-9763-ad4a0f96bc86
26 December 2016
Trisolini, Mirko
5637d517-3e44-47d1-8575-9df804914449
Lewis, Hugh
e9048cd8-c188-49cb-8e2a-45f6b316336a
Colombo, Camilla
595ced96-9494-40f2-9763-ad4a0f96bc86
Trisolini, Mirko, Lewis, Hugh and Colombo, Camilla
(2016)
Spacecraft design optimisation for demise and survivability.
In 67th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2016): Making space accessible and affordable to all countries.
vol. 3,
International Astronautical Federation.
15 pp
.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
Among the mitigation measures introduced to cope with the space debris issue there is the de-orbiting of decommissioned satellites. Guidelines for re-entering objects call for a ground casualty risk no higher than 10-4. To comply with this requirement, satellites can be designed through a design-for-demise philosophy. Still, a spacecraft designed to demise through the atmosphere has to survive the debris populated space environment for many years. The demisability and the survivability of a satellite can both be influenced by a set of common design choices such as the material selection, the geometry definition, and the position of the components inside the spacecraft. Within this context, two models have been developed to analyse the demise and the survivability of satellites. Given the competing nature of the demisability and the survivability requirements, a multi-objective optimisation framework was developed, with the aim to identify trade-off solutions for the preliminary design of satellites. As the problem is nonlinear and involves the combination of continuous and discrete variables, classical derivative based approaches are unsuited and a genetic algorithm was selected instead. The genetic algorithm uses the developed demisability and survivability criteria as the fitness functions of the multi-objective algorithm. The paper presents a test case, which considers the preliminary optimisation of tanks in terms of material, geometry, location and number of tanks for a representative Earth observation mission. The configuration of the external structure of the spacecraft is fixed. Tanks were selected because they are sensitive to both design requirements: they represent critical components in the demise process and impact damage can cause the loss of the mission because of leaking and ruptures. The results present the possible trade off solutions, constituting the Pareto front obtained from the multi-objective optimisation.
Text
Mirko Trisolini - Manuscript
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 26 September 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 26 December 2016
Published date: 26 December 2016
Keywords:
design-for-demise, survivability, multi-objectiveoptimization, re-entry, space debris, debris impact, tanks
Organisations:
Aeronautics, Astronautics & Comp. Eng, Astronautics Group, Education Hub
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 406878
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/406878
PURE UUID: 4902a6ab-4fc4-4895-a2cb-f8479f325218
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Date deposited: 25 Mar 2017 02:04
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 02:55
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Contributors
Author:
Mirko Trisolini
Author:
Camilla Colombo
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