Progression Visualisation of Mass Parameters During a Concurrent Engineering Study

Abstract

The success of a concurrent engineering study hinges on the ability of the design team to develop a concept conforming to the predefined mission requirements and constraints. A key facilitator of this is the usage of a shared baseline for defining and modifying the design components and parameters. At DLRs Concurrent Engineering Facility (CEF) this has been achieved through the use of the in-house software package Virtual Satellite since 2011. The progression of the design over the study period can be visualised by tracking and plotting the updates and commits of changes to the model made by the study team. In this paper we present a visualisation of the total launch mass and the mass breakdown by subsystem for one space mission design study as well as a comparative statistic of a subset of Concurrent Engineering studies from the CEF archive.