Multidisciplinary Design Under Uncertainty for Entry Vehicles, Phase I

The physical difficulty of designing entry vehicles originates from the large degree of coupling between the various disciplines involved in the design. Every subsystem design decision has far reaching consequences that must be evaluated in a multidisciplinary fashion in order to assess the impact on the weight and the performance of the entire vehicle. The disciplines which must be accounted and integrated during the design are: trajectory optimization, guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) technology, aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics, thermal-structural analysis, and thermal protection system (TPS) development. Previous efforts in developing a collaborative or a multidisciplinary optimization process never considered how uncertainty in the atmospheric conditions, in the entry parameters of the vehicle, in the condition of the vehicle during entry, and in the performance of the TPS will influence the design and provide a risk assessment for a mission. The proposed project will fill this void by developing a tool for multidisciplinary optimization under uncertainty (MDO-U) for entry vehicle design. The proposed development will consider how uncertainties influence the modeling results of each discipline, and how uncertainties influence the interaction between disciplines and the optimal solution. Finally, the new MDO-U design tool will compute the safety level for the optimum design.

Uncertainties due to manufacturing tolerances, material variability, the operating environment, and the state of the operating structure, are encountered in the automotive, the shipbuilding, the heavy construction equipment, and the defense industries. The MDO-U system will allow engineers to account for uncertainties during the design of their products. Thus, there is a great market potential for the outcome of this SBIR. Uncertainties due to manufacturing tolerances, material variability, the operating environment, and the state of the operating structure, are encountered in aircraft structures, launch vehicles, entry vehicles, and propulsion systems. The ability to account for such uncertainties in all these different areas, during the design stage will be valuable. Therefore, the MDO-U system will be useful to all NASA groups interested in designing space vehicles or aircraft.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.