Challenges with Structural Life Forecasting Using Realistic Mission Profiles

Abstract

Revolutionary developments in the way aircraft are managed and maintained while in service are needed to enable the U.S. Air Force to reduce its maintenance burden and increase aircraft availability while still ensuring airworthiness and safety. The Airframe Digital Twin (ADT) is envisioned to be an ultra-realistic, cradle-to-grave computer model of an aircraft structure that is used to assess the aircraft's ability to meet mission requirements. The ADT will virtually fly each flight that the physical aircraft flies in order to determine loading and subsequent damage. This paper presents results of a study to assess the current state of the art of performing such a virtual flight. A simplistic ADT was "flown" through a Touch-and-Go practice using the flight parameters recorded during the flight. Technical gaps preventing the full realization of the ADT vision were identified along with alternative approaches that are possible with current technology. Nomenclatureg's g = gravitational acceleration constant, ft/sec 2 p = roll rate, rad/sec q = pitch rate, rad/sec r = yaw rate, rad/sec u = velocity in the x-direction, ft/sec v = velocity in the y-direction, ft/sec w = velocity in the z-direction, ft/sec φ = roll Euler angle θ = pitch Euler angle ψ = yaw Euler angle ω i = angular velocity about the i-axis, rad/sec ̇ = derivative of x with respect to time

Digital twin-driven product design framework

“…Seshadri and Krishnamurthy proposed a damage characterisation method based on digital twin for aircraft structural health management, which demonstrated great advancement in predicting the damage location, size and orientation (Seshadri and Krishnamurthy 2017). Gockel et al proposed Airframe Digital Twin (ADT) to assess the flight state which helps find the subsequent damage in a real-time way (Gockel et al 2012). Besides aircrafts, General Electric pays attention to using digital twin to forecast product health in product lifecycle, which can make operations and maintenance more accurate.…”

HospiT'Win: A Predictive Simulation-Based Digital Twin for Patients Pathways in Hospital

“…First definitions of digital twin came for a vehicle and have been extended to products: B.T. Gockel et al [6] define the digital twin as "Ultra-realistic, cradle-to-grave computer model of an aircraft structure that is used to assess the aircrafts ability to meet mission requirements". For K. Reifsnider et al [7], the digital twin is "Ultra-high fidelity physical models of the materials and structures that control the life of a vehicle".…”

Industry 4.0: Some Challenges and Opportunities for Reliability Engineering

“…So real-time communication and cooperation between humans, machines, smart equipment and sensors are important. Digital twin as a real mapping of all components in the product life cycle using physical data, virtual data and interaction data between them [64], is created at this level of the system, and in the past, digital twin is mostly used for fault diagnosis, predictive maintenance and performance analysis [65][66][67]. Selfawareness, self-prediction and self-reconfiguration in the face of internal and external changes are also the system challenges.…”