Application of the ‘Federated and Executable Models’ MBSE Process to Airbus Orbital Servicing Missions | AIRBUS DEFENCE & SPACE
From the system definition by Derek Hitchins “A system is an open set of complementary, interacting parts, with properties, capabilities and behaviours emerging, both from the parts and from their interactions, to synthesize a unified whole.”, some of the main characteristics of system modelling can be derived. As an open system, its context and environment should be described to understand the dependencies between the two.
Properties of a system should be identified first, as emergent system properties give architecture and design targets.System capabilities derived from the mission states and activities prepare the identification of the system mode behavior and the top-level capabilities leading to the selection of the system functions, i.e. the functional parts.
Finally the interactions between the parts should be balanced to produce the expected system behavior and avoid non-desired behaviours, while keeping the system complexity at the right level. These different system aspects completed with the generation of system budgets and system simulations in scenarios were considered in the definition of the ‘Federated and Executable Models’ MBSE process applied at Airbus Defence and Space in different Airbus orbital servicing missions like debris removal and geo servicing.