Integrated system health management–based state evaluation for environmental control and life support system in manned spacecraft

Abstract

This article presents a state evaluation model to assess the state of health of a manned spacecraft’s environmental control and life support system, which ensures the safety of astronauts and guarantees space mission success. A state evaluation based on integrated system health management is introduced into the manned spacecraft’s environmental control and life support system to deal with safety and maintenance requirements. Due to the uncertainty and the complexity of the system, there is little research concerning state evaluation for manned spacecraft’s environmental control and life support system that considers fuzziness at the system level. A numerical example illustrates the proposed fuzzy comprehensive state evaluation model that, from a holistic perspective, takes all criteria into account, combines objective tests with subjective judgments and incorporates fuzziness and uncertainty into the ranking of the manned spacecraft’s environmental control and life support system health level. The proposed model is demonstrated by solving a state evaluation problem and the comparison analysis. It also reveals the state impact factors for manned spacecraft’s environmental control and life support system health management and conducts a valuable health state evaluation framework for complex systems.