A case study in the application of failure analysis techniques to Antarctic Systems: EDEN ISS

Abstract

This paper presents the utilization of the FMECA technique to Antarctic equipment development. Dependability techniques, which are traditionally applied to aerospace systems, can also benefit Antarctic systems, improving them from the perspective of reliability, availability, maintainability and safety. As a case study to demonstrate their utility, general failure analysis principles and the standard ECSS-Q-ST-30-02C are applied to the Antarctic space analogue project EDEN ISS. The EDEN ISS project intends to demonstrate plant cultivation technologies for safe food production in future space missions, by deploying a greenhouse module to the German Neumayer Station III Antarctic station. The long-term operation of the EDEN ISS Mobile Test Facility will improve operational procedures and the technology readiness of numerous plant production system technologies for space flight. The Mobile Test Facility is broken down into the following subsystems for failure analysis; air management system, command and data handling system, illumination system, nutrient and delivery system, power control and distribution system, plant health monitoring system and thermal control system. The Mobile Test Facility systems can be further decomposed into several subsystems and blocks up to component level for a better Functional FMECA as referred to in the literature. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the advantages of applying reliability techniques such, as FMECA, to Antarctica missions/systems, in order to minimize mission failure probability, to reduce logistics requirements and to better comply with the Antarctic Treaty requirements. The results of the FMECA have benefited the EDEN ISS Mobile Test Facility by identifying the critical failure modes, optimising block diagrams, improving the quality of the diagrams for further assembly, exploiting components and system block functions for extra safety provisions across different systems, decreasing the number of spare parts and optimizing the maintenance tasks and procedures decreasing crew workload.