Multi-objective optimisation for spacecraft design for demise and survivability

The paper presents the development of a multi-objective optimisation framework to study the effects that preliminary design choices have on the demisability and the survivability of a spacecraft. Building a spacecraft such that most of it will demise during the re-entry through design-for-demise strategies may lead to design that are more vulnerable to space debris impacts, thus compromising the reliability of the mission. The two models developed to analyse the demisability and the survivability are presented and used as the objective functions of the multi-objective optimisation of the external structure of a simplified spacecraft configuration. The results are presented in the form of Pareto fronts and selected solutions are used to test a spacecraft configuration with internal components in order to better assess the quality of the solutions.