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The Role of Digital Twin Technology in Aerospace and Aviation
The Role of Digital Twin Technology in Aerospace and Aviation

August 17, 2023

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With the help of a digital twin technology in aerospace and aviation, businesses in the  industry are able to uncover more potential out of future and present parts by getting the relevant data to understand what is working, what is not, and what can be performed better in the future. 

Introduction

In the mid of transforming economic waters and stringent manufacturing period, the aerospace, defense, and government vertical has observed an astounding technological evolution in the past few decades. Innovations, for example, automating mission-critical systems and implementing advanced electronics in deep space exploration are spreading out possibilities for government and commercial applications alike. These advancements are highlighting the demand for safe, dependable, semiconductors and software. Therefore, to allow trustworthy functionality in any landscape, be it on land, in water, in the air, or in space — complicated electronics systems should be prototyped, checked, and monitored to mitigate risk and boost quality.

Nonetheless, how do you make sure complex systems such as satellites the size of football fields or sensors functioning with the size of a quarter will work without fault or any machine or manual error for greater periods of time?

Digital twin technology in aerospace and aviation are providing a specific potential for tackling the complexity of refined systems and to increase time-to-market without being vulnerable to security or productivity. While the term is typically considered to be more visionary as compared to what is being deployed today, system companies have been integrating digital twins into their development process for quite a time now.

 

Why are Digital Twin Technology in Aerospace and Aviation is Important?

Digital twins can be utilized for an array of applications and operations. Just like its definition in the automotive industry, a digital twin is a virtual creation of a physical system and imitates operations of the real hardware and software. In the aerospace and aviation industry, digital twins are providing a virtual representation of systems such as a satellite, aircraft, or even a semiconductor subsystem within a bigger system.

For the past twenty years, the thought of digital twins deployed only to mechanical parts and components. Nonetheless, over the last four to five years, digital twins have also been integrated for electronic systems. This transformation in use is enabled by the expanding complexity of compute platforms, the accessibility of enhanced capabilities and models, and the significant amount of software run on today’s systems.

On the other hand, a fundamental question that people ask when implementing digital twins is: What system scale is being into consideration? Is it applicable for a subsystem like the braking system in an aircraft? Or may be is it applicable for a printed circuit board in the cockpit? Or is it for an underlying chip and its software that allows important control operations with an aircraft? While the principles remain the same across different system levels, digital twins are necessary in aerospace and aviation industry because they can boost or substitute the physical systems which were needed for prototyping in the past. Furthermore, they are also precious for developers in a number of locations or for presentation to a customer or user.

For instance, the Joint Strike Fighter has more than 25 million lines of code and has 30,000 pounds dry weight; wonder the challenge for modifying the software code and physical computer hardware since the aircraft control processing and platforms are transformed during development. The cost and time concerned is huge, let alone the probability of accomplishing a healthy failure-to-success ratio. In addition, prototyping offers the best benefit when it is deployed early in the development stage and allows substantial value post hardware availability, when crucial design decisions such as CI/CD flow and fault injection methodological analysis are being made — an impossible effort for achieving without the need of actual hardware. This is where digital twins are playing an important role in testing, validating, and verifying both the hardware and software in actual -world scenarios.

Benefits of Digital Twins 

Better Effective Development of Equipment: 

With the incorporation of a digital twin and the gathered data by the sensors, aerospace businesses will be having higher effective strategies for testing changes to processes to augment efficiency. 

Improve Efficiency: 

In addition to the above, a digital twin will offer a higher testing ground for enhancements to overall productivity of one machine or a fleet. 

Predictive Maintenance and Lifespan: 

With data collected, businesses can better forecast when a part or machine is about to reach the end of its lifespan and become more active with maintenance needs and the ordering of parts and replacements. 

How Aerospace Companies Can Utilize Digital Twins? 

Digital twin technology in aerospace and aviation industry are enabling a number of opportunities for businesses in the concerned industry from augmenting the life of parts and machines to deploying collected data for enhancing the coming iteration of them. 

Whereas, Boeing saw a 40% improvement in first-time standard of parts by integrating digital twins in development 

In Research and Development, aerospace companies will be using digital twins to boost the engineering of new parts by being able to imitate their performance in an enormous variety of conditions. How will an engine fair in rough weather? What will be the performance like after 300+ flights? This understanding can now be achieved and used for improving parts, forecast when maintenance is required, and increase the lifespan of  vehicles, machinery, and more. 

In fact, in some instances, machines in development will be performing what no machine has performed before or will be directed to places where they can’t be traced, into space for example. With the incorporation of digital twin technology, companies will be having the capability to manage them digitally and that too with an accuracy of 147%. 

The integration of digital twins in Aerospace and aviation industry is bringing forth many new opportunities by unleashing datasets that were impossible or very difficult to get before by eliminating many of the challenges of tracking operation while a part or machine is in action. 

Digital Twins in Aerospace and Government

Already, digital twins are accelerating development for aerospace, defense, and government applications. The technology will be becoming more crucial in the development cycle as electronics are increasing in complexity and expanding to multi-die systems.

Down the “runway,” we won’t be surprised if the technology will be deployed as a set of fundamental constructing blocks from development throughout the life cycle of the system as well as for regression and post-deployment testing. The fastest and most competitive players who are able to master the art and have the in-depth of expertise will succeed. With Aeologic Technologies, passionately leading the market in both verticals, we believe that the promise of digital twin technology in aerospace and aviation applications is being realized rapidly.


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