Towards a Conceptual Data Model for Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery in Virtual Satellite

Reliability engineering is an integral part in the design of safety critical systems. Especially spacecraft that cannot receive physical maintenance once delivered into orbit heavily require a fault tolerant design approach. In order to overcome these challenges, concepts from the domain of Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR) are employed. With this paper we present our approach for bringing Model Based Systems Engineering into the realm of reliability engineering using the Virtual Satellite (VirSat) framework. The tool we are developing for this purpose is called VirSat FDIR. In this paper, we discuss a Conceptual Data Model for modelling important aspects of the FDIR domain that we have conceived and implemented for VirSat FDIR. It supports modelling of FDIR faults, recovery, analysis and requirements. We further discuss how these models can be actively used for the purpose of generation of FDIR artefacts and the process of Verification and Validation.