Page 33 - AAA MARCH - APRIL 2019 Online Magazine

[ GUEST COLUMN - NADINE ETONG ]
Unlocking

Opportunities

With interest in digital twin technology at an all-time high across
a wide variety of industries, one of the forerunners in its adoption
right now is aerospace and defence. This is particularly true for
the commercial aviation segment, explains Nadine Etong, Director,
MRO Product Line at the Aerospace and Defence Business
Unit, IFS. The global digital twin market size is expected to reach
US$26.07 billion by 2025—registering a strong CAGR of 38.2 per
cent over the forecast years—and we are now starting to see the
first successful use cases of digital twins in action in commercial
aviation. GE has already built digital twin components for its GE60
Engine family and also helped develop the world’s first digital twin
for an aircraft’s landing gear. In this last scenario, sensors placed
on typical landing gear failure points, such as hydraulic pressure Nadine Etong, Director, MRO Product Line at
and brake temperature, provide real-time data to help predict early the Aerospace and Defence Business Unit, IFS.
malfunctions or diagnose the remaining lifecycle of the landing gear.
real-time—much more valuable than one fancy
FOUR TECHNOLOGY DRIVERS 3D model.

No Twins are Identical!
IOT & BIG DATA – The proliferation of sensors on assets or com-
ponents combined with connected systems allows organisations Digital twins work in different situations, appli-
to gain detailed insights into live performance cations and processes depending on the
context of the organisation in the supply chain.
ADVANCED ANALYTICS – Through machine learning we can Component manufacturers, for example, are
use this data to predict and simulate the future condition or dete- primarily focused on individual components,
rioration of the asset in question while engine OEMs care mainly about the
engine as an entire asset. Heavy/base main-
COMPUTING POWER – Cloud-based technology vastly improves tenance inspectors and regulators are more
the affordability and availability of the computing power required focused on overall maintenance business pro-
to run large-scale digital twin models
cesses and standards, and this continues right
up to line maintenance providers who look pri-
ACCESSIBILITY – Where previously a digital twin may have
been locked into the control room of a factory or organisation, this marily at MRO data and the airline/operator
data can now be accessed from anywhere via mobile devices. which wants to piece together a digital twin of
the entire aircraft.
Dispelling the ‘Physical’ Myth
But how do you define a digital twin? An accepted definition would It’s all about the data –
be a replica of anything which gives you real-time insight into the business applications act as
status of a real-world asset to enable organisations to better key enablers
manage equipment and inform business decisions. In fact, digital These differing priorities have a consequence
twins have been around – at least in part – for a while, but they’ve on what a business application needs to do
taken names such as ‘mirrored systems’ and ‘connected factories.’ to manage digital twin data. A lot of the data
However, these deployments have been focused on physical assets, required for digital twin technology sits within
unlike digital twins which are not limited to a 3D model of a single supporting business applications: assets are
piece of equipment. Running a digital twin for a single asset is only mapped within enterprise software, including
the first step and, thanks to those four enabling technologies, this historical maintenance data, work orders and
can now be extrapolated to create a digital twin of a whole fleet of original engineering and design data. From this
assets. Take this a step further and a digital twin of the whole fleet we can see that enterprise applications are
can become part of a digital twin of an entire business or organ- hugely beneficial in constructing different kinds
isation, with process flows visualised and bottlenecks flagged in of digital twins. In some cases, the supporting

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