Digital Twin Design - Precision Modeling Saves Costs and Shrinks Delivery Timelines
As the Navy begins an effort to save billions of dollars across its shipbuilding plan over the coming years, CACI continues to deliver critical mission expertise to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and affordability in ship design, manufacturing, and lifecycle support. CACI announced in April 2020 it would provide analyses and initiatives to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to deliver maximum cost savings to the Navy as the service seeks to meet emerging threats, increase readiness, and achieve savings across its shipbuilding plan. It’s just the latest example of how precision modeling performed by CACI engineers, technicians, and analysts is saving the military money and time.
To achieve those cost and time savings, Navy and military leaders are taking a cue from commercial manufacturers, such as Tesla and Airbus, who use sophisticated virtual copies of their products to test performance before they are built. The adoption of this “digital twin” technology will allow military planners to avoid a multitude of platform manufacturing and integration issues before the “metal is cut.” The practice prevents costly delays and results in faster deliveries of the final product.
No matter which domain they are designed for, military platforms are packed with advanced technologies. They typically require integrated power systems, IT networks, surveillance, command and control, communications, weapons systems, and more. Besides taking up physical space, each of these systems requires power and most require network bandwidth, so it is essential to understand how the introduction of new capabilities will impact overall operations. As the complexity of a given platform increases, so does the risk of failures related to the challenge of integrating a multitude of systems built for different purposes by disparate manufacturers.
A good digital twin includes the overall design of the platform, as well as designs of each of its systems and subsystems. Where practical, it includes data from manufacturing processes and from actual performance in the field, including wear and tear on parts and known technical issues. This information is then used to develop multi-physics simulations of all the platform’s systems and their interactions. The data allows performance testing under varying conditions and helps predict integration, inter-operability, maintenance, and retrofitting issues well before manufacturing and integration begin.
Adopting digital twin technology means taking a holistic approach to the processes of requirements development, design, production, training, and lifecycle management. It requires a change of culture, with much more frequent communication among all the parties involved. However, the time and effort expended in planning is a fraction of what it would take to fix problems once parts and systems have been delivered.
The Right Framework is Essential
CACI can assist customers in developing a digital twin framework that brings together disparate engineering disciplines, whether for integrating new systems or retrofitting legacy systems with new capabilities.
The technology can be used for many challenges, including:
- Developing network functional requirements and operational specifications;
- Performance evaluation of the integrated system in various scenarios;
- Evaluation of network reliability, limitations, latency, stability, recovery, andupgradability;
- Understanding how the power system’s architecture and the overlaying command/control/communication/data/security (C3DS) network interact.
For more information about how digital twin modeling can ensure system-of-systems interoperability, or for assistance with developing a pilot program, contact:
Tim Johnson, Program Director, [email protected]
