Browse Topic: Design processes
ABSTRACT US Army and Marine Corps tactical networking and command post programs have a widely-acknowledged critical need to improve mobility, including the objective of moving to mobile, vehicle-mounted command posts that can move hourly. The current state of the art for tent-based command posts requires hours of setup, which includes thousands of feet of copper wiring that delay network availability. To enable mobility for warfighting, the National Security Agency (NSA) established a program (with a set of guidelines) called “Commercial Solutions for Classified” (CSfC). CSfC-based mobility solutions have great potential to enable command post mobility and soldier dismounted situational awareness using ground vehicles as network nodes. However, the extensive requirements and processes involved are complex and not well understood. This paper compares various CSfC network architectures, and proposes several approaches for CSfC solutions optimized for mobility use cases. The paper further
ABSTRACT This paper will incorporate product development methodology from the FED program where AVL is responsible in collaboration with World Technical Services Inc., for delivering a fully developed hybrid propulsion system integrated into the demonstrator vehicle. Specifically, the paper will discuss via case study the unique methodology employed by AVL Powertrain to develop, validate, and integrate our hybrid propulsion system into the FED vehicle. Content will include traditional and virtual powertrain development methodologies that maximize product development efficiency, ensure a robust final design, and minimize development costs. Hybrid controls development, calibration techniques and vehicle design issues will also be discussed
ABSTRACT In development of next generation products, 80% or more of the downstream costs associated are committed during design phase. If we could predict, with reasonable confidence, the long-term impact of design decisions, it would open opportunities to develop better designs that result in tremendous future cost savings, often with no compromise in key performance objectives. Systems engineering is, by its nature, multi-disciplinary. The aim of Integrated Product and Process Development is to bring these disciplines together in order to assess various downstream implications of early design decisions, creating better designs, avoiding dead-end designs that are costly in terms of design cycle-time, and realizing designs that are manufacturable while achieving the performance objectives. The goal is to build a downstream value analysis tool that links all the conceptual design activities. This capability allows a designer to realize the long-range impacts of key up-front design
Many of the “ilities” (Reliability, Maintainability, etc) are afterthoughts in the creation of a specification, and are often relegated to a set of templated boilerplate requirements, that are largely ignored. The Reliability / Robust Design professionals often use a P-Diagram (Parameter Diagram) as a key part of understanding the system under design. A way of integrating the Reliability effort more into the mainstream of the design activity, and give them a stronger voice, is to put their P-Diagram right into the specification, before it gets released to industry. This paper describes the rationale and the manner in which to do this
ABSTRACT An efficient and collaborative process for the realization and implementation of an electrical power management strategy for a modern military vehicle is demonstrated. Power, software and hardware engineers working together and using simulation and emulation tools are able to develop, simulate and validate a power strategy before prototype vehicle integration, reducing integration cost and time. For demonstration, an intelligent electrical power management strategy is developed for a generic military vehicle with conventional engine/transmission propulsion and an inline generator. The challenge of this architecture is maintaining electrical bus stability/regulation at low engine speed given that electrical power demands may exceed power supplied. The intelligent electrical power management strategy presented limits the total power demand to power available by overriding the demands of the individual loads. Based on load prioritization and vehicle system dynamics, power limits
ABSTRACT Global Positioning System (GPS) technology has seen increased use in many different military applications worldwide, beyond navigation. The Warfighter uses GPS to enhance Situational Awareness on the battle field with systems such as Land Warrior, Blue Force Tracker, TIGR, and various electronic mission planning tools in locations where the GPS signals are normally not available. For example, this includes the inside of a HMMWV, Stryker, or MRAP. GPS retransmission, or the art of repeating a live GPS signal, has evolved into a technically advanced solution to provide GPS signals to the Warfighter mounted inside ground vehicles, protecting themselves from sniper and IED threats, while providing mobility and Situational Awareness from vehicle mounted communication & navigation systems. The objective of this technical paper is to communicate a relevant understanding of how this technology is being embraced by the Warfighter to accomplish their mission safer and more efficiently
ABSTRACT The Center for Ground Vehicle Development and Integration (CGVDI) is a U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC) capability responsible for design, fabrication, integration, and support of additional capabilities for fielded systems as well as overall project management. CGVDI provides customers a single office that coordinates activities across the U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) to conduct the complete spectrum of activities required to support Project Management Offices with design, development, integration, and testing of ground systems to meet the needs of the Warfighter. To better serve the organizations and programs supported by CGVDI, the TARDEC Systems Engineering Group worked to infuse Systems Engineering (SE) processes into CGVDI standard operating procedures as a way to effectively meet project cost, schedule, risk, and performance goals
ABSTRACT BAE Systems Combat Simulation and Integration Labs (CSIL) are a culmination of more than 14 years of operational experience at our SIL facility in Santa Clara. The SIL provides primary integration and test functions over the entire life cycle of a combat vehicle’s development. The backbone of the SIL operation is the Simulation-Emulation-Stimulation (SES) process. The SES process has successfully supported BAE Systems US Combat Systems (USCS) SIL activities for many government vehicle development programs. The process enables SIL activities in vehicle design review, 3D virtual prototyping, human factor engineering, and system & subsystem integration and test. This paper describes how CSIL applies the models, software, and hardware components in a hardware-in-the-loop environment to support USCS combat vehicle development in the system integration lab
ABSTRACT Designing robots for military applications requires a greater understanding between the engineer and the Soldier. Soldier considerations result from experiences not common to the engineer in the lab and, when understood, can minimize the design time and provide a more capable product that is more readily deployed into the unit
ABSTRACT Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio ranging technology was integrated into a local positioning system (LPS) for tracking mobile robots. A practical issue was the occasional large sporadic errors in the radio range data due to multipath due to reflections and attenuation effect caused by radio penetration through mediums. In this paper, we present a filtering and system integration of the radios with vehicle sensors to produce location and orientation of a moving object being tracked. We introduced a fuzzy neighborhood filter to remove outliers from range data, a progressive trilateration filter to improve update rate and produce a fused estimate of vehicle location with a compass and wheel speed sensors. Experiments were recorded and estimated position and orientation were validated against the video recording of vehicle ground truth. The UWB LPS can be used for navigation and guidance of multiple mobile robots around a command vehicle, and employed for tracking of assets of interest
ABSTRACT The classic trinity of armored fighting vehicle design is the tradeoff between Armament, Armor, and Mobility. In a practical design, all three cannot be simultaneously maximized, so engineers must determine the proper balance between these capabilities, which would offer optimal combat performance, taking into account the limitations of industrial mass production. This study explores trends in the historical evolution of combat vehicles, from their initial appearance on the battlefields of World War 1 to the modern era. Additionally, this study also examines the basic physical limitations of combat vehicle design as a whole, by presenting fundamental performance limits that are universal to all classes of combat vehicles. This analysis is used to identify key areas of research that would be of significant benefit to the development of future combat vehicles. Citation: O. Sapunkov, “Historical Trends and Parameter Relationships in the Design of Armored Fighting Vehicles”, in
ABSTRACT The Bradley Combat Vehicle Motor Chatter case study focuses on one aspect of a combat vehicle program, specifically, responding to a vehicle production situation where combat vehicles produced with in-spec components and subsystems exhibit out-of-spec and failing system behavior. This typically results in an extended production line-down or line-degraded situation lasting for several quarters until the problem can be diagnosed, fixed, validated and verified. Subsequently, adequate quantities of the modified or replaced sub-systems must be put back into the production flow. The direct and indirect costs of an occurrence like this in peace-time are measured in the 10’s to 100’s of Millions of dollars. The schedule, program and perception impact to the vehicle platform can be potentially devastating. In war-time all of these impacts are magnified greatly by the added risk to soldiers’ lives. This paper describes the Bradley Combat Vehicle Motor Chatter case study and the
ABSTRACT The IGVC offers a design experience that is at the very cutting edge of engineering education, with a particular focus in developing engineering control/sensor integration experience for the college student participants. A main challenge area for teams is the proper processing of all the vehicle sensor feeds, optimal integration of the sensor feeds into a world map and the vehicle leveraging that world map to plot a safe course using robust control algorithms. This has been an ongoing challenge throughout the 27 year history of the competition and is a challenge shared with the growing autonomous vehicle industry. High consistency, reliability and redundancy of sensor feeds, accurate sensor fusion and fault-tolerant vehicle controls are critical, as even small misinterpretations can cause catastrophic results, as evidenced by the recent serious vehicle crashes experienced by self-driving companies including Tesla and Uber Optimal control techniques & sensor selection
ABSTRACT This presentation shows the process a team should use to initiate a design project based on the needs of the customer. The VRS project supports the future integration and development needs of four combat platforms (Abrams, AMPV, Bradley, and Stryker) and TARDEC’s PM CVP. For this presentation, and to simplify the explanation, the TRADOC developed capability for Silent Watch is used to demonstrate the processes of analyzing Capability Description Documents (CDD), creating and deriving good requirements, allocating them to specific functions and activities, describing those activities to the lowest level, designing, building, and eventually testing
ABSTRACT As contracts move from cost plus to fixed deliverables, total project cost and reducing schedules become more important. This paper will show how Model Driven Development can address common challenges in the system design, verification & testing of complex systems and systems of systems. Project success requires that hardware, software, and test teams fluently integrate application software, controlling firmware, analog and digital hardware, and mechanical components, which often proves to be costly in terms of time, money, and engineering resources. Model Driven Development and virtual prototyping using a tools flow emphasizing requirements tracing, UML / SysML system modeling, and linking to functional FPGA, IC, PCB and cabling domains supports system engineering teams along with software, digital hardware, analog hardware, system interconnect algorithm development, hardware / software co-simulation, and virtual system integration. This paper covers such solutions that
ABSTRACT This paper reviews the UK Defence Standard 23-009 for Generic Vehicle Architecture (GVA), describes how the standard is being applied to the UK vehicle procurement programme, and the benefits expected from adopting the approach and standard. The expansion of the use of GVA to other countries will be discussed including the adoption of the fundamental approach by NATO/ 5 eyes countries
ABSTRACT Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) offers the ability to connect an ever expanding set of disciplines through the system model into specialty areas, having a dramatic impact early and lasting throughout the system lifecycle. System safety and cybersecurity are two such areas that are far too often “patched” into a system design versus properly integrated. MBSE and the use of a system model provides a methodology to integrate these areas early in the design process. Addressing system safety and cybersecurity concerns from the beginning stages of development will enforce adoption of principals and best practices throughout the life of the system
ABSTRACT The Modular Open RF Architecture’s (MORA) core objective is to logically decompose radio frequency (RF) systems for efficiency, flexibility, reusability, and scalability while enabling management, health monitoring, and sharing of raw and/or processed data. MORA extends the Army’s Vehicular Integration for C4ISR/EW Interoperability (VICTORY) architecture. MORA was introduced to the GVSETS community in 2015 at version 1.0 of the specification, and has matured with the help of community, industry, and academia partners to its current version 2.3. This paper discusses the current state of the MORA specification and how it has evolved beyond its initial topology to encompass the entirety of the RF chain in an open and modular fashion. In addition, this paper will describe the purpose of MORA, the objectives of its development, its foundation, and the basic concepts and core features. Citation: J. Broczkowski, D. Bailey, T. Ryder, J. Dirner, “Modular Open RF Architecture (MORA
ABSTRACT The goal of the human factors engineer is to work within the systems engineering process to ensure that a Crew Centric Design approach is utilized throughout system design, development, fielding, sustainment, and retirement. To evaluate the human interface, human factors engineers must often start with a low fidelity mockup, or virtual model, of the intended design until a higher fidelity physical representation or the working hardware is available. Testing the Warrior-Machine Interface needs to begin early and continue throughout the Crew Centric Design process to ensure optimal soldier performance. This paper describes a Four Step Process to achieve this goal and how it has been applied to the ground combat vehicle programs. Using these four steps in the ground combat vehicle design process improved design decisions by including the user throughout the process either in virtual or real form, and applying the user’s operational requirements to drive the design
ABSTRACT The IGVC offers a design experience that is at the very cutting edge of engineering education. It is multidisciplinary, theory-based, hands-on, team implemented, outcome assessed, and based on product realization. It encompasses the very latest technologies impacting industrial development and taps subjects of high interest to students. Design and construction of an Intelligent Vehicle fits well in a two semester senior year design capstone course, or an extracurricular activity earning design credit. The deadline of an end-of-term competition is a real-world constraint that includes the excitement of potential winning recognition and financial gain. Students at all levels of undergraduate and graduate education can contribute to the team effort, and those at the lower levels benefit greatly from the experience and mentoring of those at higher levels. Team organization and leadership are practiced, and there are even roles for team members from business and engineering
ABSTRACT Design for structural topology optimization is a method of distributing material within a design domain of prescribed dimensions. This domain is discretized into a large number of elements in which the optimization algorithm removes, adds, or maintains the amount of material. The resulting structure maximizes a prescribed mechanical performance while satisfying functional and geometric constraints. Among different topology optimization algorithms, the hybrid cellular automaton (HCA) method has proven to be efficient and robust in problems involving large, plastic deformations. The HCA method has been used to design energy absorbing structures subject to crash impact. The goal of this investigation is to extend the use of the HCA algorithm to the design of an advanced composite armor (ACA) system subject to a blast load. The ACA model utilized consists of two phases: ceramic and metallic. In this work, the proposed algorithm drives the optimal distribution of a metallic phase
ABSTRACT Current written system specifications have a high degree of uncertainty which causes specifications to be changed because they are incorrect, incomplete or do not possess the degree of rigor to make them precise. Even when generated by modeling methods such as UML/SySML or standards such as DoDAF, these functional specifications still lack any validation with respect to architecture, mission, and scenario impacts. The lack of consideration of these aspects creates design errors are usually exposed during the test and integration phases where the expense is greater to correct than in the early conceptual design phase. This paper will introduce the concept of Validated Executable Specifications (VES) that will enable Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) to validate early in the design process to reduce risk and save costs in a System of System (SoS) model
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