Software toolbox for spacecraft design optimisation

Today’s spacecraft play a vital role in scientific research, communications, meteorology, navigation and security. Putting new craft into orbit involves huge expense, so the design of efficient but lightweight system components is a crucial aspect of spacecraft development. We created an innovative software toolbox that enables ESA designers and engineers to find the best trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness, optimising the design of a variety of spacecraft parts, including heat pipes, turbo pumps and injection chambers.

Technological advantages of the toolbox

• Software library for engineering design optimisation, suitable for solving problems with millions of variables and constraints
• Optimisation solver of choice of the European Space Agency (ESA)
• Flexible toolbox containing several state-of-the-art optimisation and globalisation techniques
• Interfaces: C/C++, Fortran, Matlab, ASTOS, AMPL, CasADi, various communication paradigms

Technology roadmap

2006-2007: Sparse-NLP solver: funded by BMWi grant 50JR0688, led by OHB Systems and in cooperation with Astos Solutions (formerly TTI)

2008-2010: FGS toolbox: funded by European Space Agency TEC-ECM, in cooperation with universities of Southampton, Birmingham, Bremen, Munich, and Coimbra

2007-2010: BlackBox Optimizer: funded by BMWi grant 50RL0722, in cooperation with Astos Solutions

2007-2010: eNLP: funded by ESA TEC-ECM (GSTP-4 G603-45EC), in cooperation with universities of Southampton, Bremen, and Coimbra, as well as Skysoft (now GMV) and Astos Solutions

2011: Various extensions towards special-purpose solvers and particular design problems. Development ongoing

Collaboration opportunity

The toolbox is ready to be applied to practical engineering design problems and is available as a service or research collaboration.

For the cost of a studentship or postdoctoral fellow, the system can be further developed to particular design paradigms, eg robust optimisation, multiobjective optimisation, optimisation -on-achip, and others.

If you would like to know more, please contact Jeorg Fliege j.fliege@soton.ac.uk