Rapid Simulation Development For Concurrent Engineering

For mission design studies in phase 0 the approach of Concurrent Engineering (CE) promises a significant shortening of development time. However current simulation techniques cannot compete with the highly parallel execution of many tasks and the frequent design changes during a CE session. To get simulation back into such design studies ESA/ESTEC, VEGA and Astrium have designed and implemented a rapid component based simulation process (design, development and integration) and associated tools. From a simulation workbook, a wizard creates a first simulation in a few minutes, which can immediately be executed using ESA’s SIMSAT simulation kernel. A fundamental part of the solution is a library of SMP 2 compliant standard models that are typically needed in every space mission. As almost every mission will require specific models, these can be derived from existing models by enhancing their functionality and complexity. An Integrated Model Development Environment provides a graphical design of these models. Further it supports assembling and scheduling of a simulation. An integrated C++ code generator ensures that the implementation of each model is always SMP 2 compliant. Further, a report generator can be used to keep the detailed model design documentation up to date.