A university workshop was organised to observe the capabilities and weaknesses of DDSE, when presented to a group of students that are asked to collaborate and work concurrently in a short time frame.
The engineering tool mainly used by the students was the software Valispace, which provided a repository for all the data shared by the students during the experiment. Valispace is a web-based software tool where students could create system architectures of components and subcomponents, each with parameters that were linked between each other
After an introduction on systems engineering, the workshop consists of a practical example of the engineering design process for space missions. The students are presented with a subject that has seen a growing interest in recent times: a Lunar surface base. The activity is composed of two main parts: one is dedicated to the “system of systems” architecture, and the other is focused on “system-level” design. The group of students, divided into teams of 4 to 6 people, are asked to collaborate to complete the workshop’s assignments, described in a "engineering manual”.
The first part of the workshop is dedicated to the conception of a system of systems architecture of a Lunar base. This section is intended to stimulate the team members’ creativity: students are invited to discuss the main objectives of their mission, the role of crew members and a first concept of operations. As output of this part they are asked to provide a product tree of the mission building blocks, producing very preliminary versions of their mass and power budgets.
In the second part, dedicated to sizing subsystems, the students perform the preliminary design of four interdependent systems. Inside each team, duties are distributed and the sizing procedures are performed, following the provided instructions which also include some cross-referenced values, pressuring the team to communicate and collaborate.