This document serves as a summary of the creation of a method that supports and enables the development, integration, evaluation, and selection of self-healing systems within deep space habitats. We begin with developing the inherent motivation and desire for the inclusion of self-healing systems within space habitats: the problem with traditional methods of fault recovery and how they fail in a space habitat context. The intrinsic links between the concept of the self-healing system, Prognostics and Health Management, and affiliated areas of research are then shown to prove the relevance of this thesis’ work to the PHM Society. The research plan is then laid out fully, beginning with the initial architecting of the baseline system of interest, generation of promising self-healing architectures, development of an analytical model to investigate faults, failures, and promising self-healing architectures, approaches to trade said self-healing architectures, and finally, showcasing how a selection process could be handled for a user-defined optimal architecture to be integrated within a habitat of choice. Preliminary results will be presented here. Finally, the novelty of the problem and approach is showcased specifically, along with contributions to the field of PHM, but also self-healing system development, and resilience engineering as a whole.
Koerschner et al. (Sun,) studied this question.