Toward a methodology for the system integration of adaptive resilience in armor

This article introduces a novel augmentation to systems engineering methodology based on the integration of adaptive capacity, which produces enhanced resilience in technological systems that operate in complex operating environments. The implementation of this methodology enhances system resistance to top‐level function failure or accelerates the system's functional recovery in the event of a top‐level function failure due to functional requirement shift, evolutions, or perturbations. The research expands system engineering, design, and integration methodologies, which currently do not explicitly address system adaptation and resilience, through the definition and demonstration of a methodology to integrate adaptive resilience and demonstrates its implementation in a relevant armor system case study. The methodology accomplishes this objective by defining adaptive design considerations, identifying controllable adaptive performance factors, characterizing adaptive performance factors and configurations, mapping and integrating adaptive components, and verifying and validating the adaptive components and configurations that achieve system requirements and adaptive design considerations. The utility of this research is demonstrated through development of an adaptive resilient armor system called the mechanically adaptive armor linkage (MAAL), which was designed, developed, and validated using the methodology for the system integration of adaptive resilience (MSIAR). The conceptual validity of the methodology is proven through a physical comparative test and evaluation of the system described in the case study. The research and resulting methodology supplements and enhances traditional systems engineering processes by offering systems designers the opportunity to integrate adaptive capacity into systems, enhancing their resilient resistance, or recovery to top‐level function failure in complex operating environments.