A COUPLED MODEL BASED SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING APPROACH TO DEFINE AFFORDABLE REQUIREMENTS

Programs have traditionally defined system requirements based on mission requirements and former system characteristics with limited knowledge on how their decisions impact the overall design space. This paper describes a methodology that combines model based systems engineering (MBSE) and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) to define affordable requirements prior to the design cycle. Two unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) concepts were modeled in a multi-disciplinary simulation process environment using SIMULIA’s Process Composer application. Then the results were loaded into SIMULIA’s Results Analytics application, an advanced analytics and decision support tool, for performance versus affordability requirement trade-off analysis. Results Analytics is able to uncover data patterns, show design space sensitivity to requirements, and explicitly prioritize and quantify requirements employing a design ranking algorithm.