Modular Concurrent Engineering Models: Enabling Alternative Models in Conceptual Satellite Design

Design groups have worked for many years to provide rapid development and modeling of conceptual space vehicles using Concurrent Engineering Models (CEMs). A large number of design tools have been crafted to meet different aims and goals within the systems engineering community.The challenges to build upon these previous models to generate a flexible CEM capable of using interchangeable modules that model the subsystems of a space vehicle are described in this paper. Rather than redeveloping entire CEMs to fit specific purposes, users and developers can focus their attention on crafting only the new modules they need while making use of other pre-existing modules. In this way, the Modular CEM can take advantage of many of the lessons learned in previous CEM development efforts. The new Modular CEM is designed to incorporate some error checking to help the systems engineer correctly use the model, to facilitate easy addition or extraction of data into or out of the model, and to incorporate improvements in ease of use and ease of development. This paper describes the relationship of this model to previously developed CEMs, the modeling approach taken by the design team, the current state of the Modular CEM, and describes applications where the Modular CEM has been applied.