Additive manufacturing (AM) is becoming increasingly attractive for aerospace companies due to the fact of its increased ability to allow design freedom and reduce weight. Despite these benefits, AM comes with manufacturing constraints that limit design freedom and reduce the possibility of achieving advanced geometries that can be produced in a cost-efficient manner. To exploit the design freedom offered by AM while ensuring product manufacturability, a model-based design for an additive manufacturing (DfAM) method is presented. The method is based on the premise that lessons learned from testing and prototyping activities can be systematically captured and organized to support early design activities. To enable this outcome, the DfAM method extends a representation often used in early design, a function–means model, with the introduction of a new model construct—manufacturing constraints (Cm). The method was applied to the redesign, manufacturing, and testing of a flow connector for satellite applications. The results of this application—as well as the reflections of industrial practitioners—point to the benefits of the DfAM method in establishing a systematic, cost-efficient way of challenging the general AM design guidelines found in the literature and a means to redefine and update manufacturing constraints for specific design problems.

For space manufacturers, additive manufacturing promises to dramatically reduce weight and costs by means of integral designs achieved through part consolidation. However, integrated designs hinder the ability to change and service components over time – actually increasing costs – which is instead enabled by highly modular designs. Finding the optimal trade-off between integral and modular designs in additive manufacturing is of critical importance. In this article, a product modularisation methodology is proposed for supporting such trade-offs. The methodology is based on combining function modelling with optimisation algorithms. It evaluates product design concepts with respect to product adaptability, component interface costs, manufacturing costs and cost of post-processing activities. The developed product modularisation methodology is derived from data collected through a series of workshops with industrial practitioners from three different manufacturer companies of space products. The implementation of the methodology is demonstrated in a case study featuring the redesign of a satellite antenna.

The higher satellite production rates expected in new megaconstellation scenarios involve radical changes in the way design trade-offs need to be considered by electric propulsion companies. In relative comparison, flexibility and qualification ability will have a higher impact in megaconstellations compared to traditional businesses. For these reasons, this paper proposes a methodology for assessing flexible propulsion architectures by taking into account variations in market behavior and qualification activities. Through the methodology, flexibility and qualification ability can be traded against traditional engineering attributes (such as functional performances) in a quantitative way. The use of the methodology is illustrated through an industrial case related to the study of xenon vs. krypton architectures for megaconstellation businesses. This paper provides insights on how to apply the methodology in other case studies, in order to enable engineering teams to present and communicate the impact of alternative architectural concepts to program managers and decision-makers.

Test and qualification (T&Q) phases take a significant portion of the time to market for critical products in the space industry, especially when introducing new technologies. Since T&Q are treated as standard procedures, they tend to be independent of the architectural design phases and kept away from design decisions. However, when introducing new technologies, qualification procedures may differ from those established in regular design scenarios, and the estimation of qualification costs and duration is problematic. There is a lack of design for qualification methods capable of modelling these activities in early phases and use those models to support the architecture design of products with affordable test and qualification phases. In this article, a computer-assisted, model-based design method to model T&Q activities concerning early product architecture designs is proposed. Product architecture alternatives, test schedules and cost are connected through the quantification of T&Q drivers and driver rates. The design method is demonstrated using a case study about electric propulsion for satellites. The method is applicable for design situations where the choice of technology has a strong dependence on the qualification procedure.