Engineering Domain Interoperability Using the System Structure and Parameterization (SSP) Standard

Establishing interoperability is an essential aspect in the often pursued shift towards Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) of, for example, aircraft. If models are to be the primary information carriers during development, the applied methods to enable interaction between engineering domains need to be modular, reusable, and scalable. One possible solution is to rely on available open-source tools and standards. In this paper, the standards Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) and System Structure and Parameterization (SSP) are exploited to exchange data between the disciplines of systems simulation and geometry modeling. A method to export data from the 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) Software (SW) CATIA in the SSP format is developed and presented. Analogously, FMI support of the Modeling & Simulation (M&S) tools OMSimulator, OpenModelica, and Dymola are utilized along with the SSP support of OMSimulator. The developed technology is put into context by means of integration with M&S methodology for aircraft vehicle system development deployed at Saab Aeronautics. Finally, the established interoperability is demonstrated in an industrially relevant use-case. A primary goal of the research is to prototype and demonstrate functionality, enabled by the SSP and FMI standards, that could improve on MBSE methodology implemented in industry and academia.