VIRTUAL TWINS KEEP AIRCRAFT MISSION READY
The B-1 Lancer has been a strategic military aircraft for the US since the 1980s. But after years of heavy use in combat, much of the fleet is retired and the remainder in service face issues around structural fatigue and part obsolescence. In 2017, the B-1’s mission readiness was less than 53%, which spurred a call to action by former US Secretary of Defense James Mattis to be 80% mission ready. Now under tight restrictions in terms of how and how often they can fly during training and live operations, it has become a matter of national security to get more of the aircraft mission ready.
That’s why the US Air Force has given NIAR the mammoth task of dismantling, cataloging and scanning every single part of the strategic aircraft to create a full-scale, operational virtual twin. The program will provide the US Air Force with unprecedented information on the B-1 and promises to revolutionize the way the government procures replacement parts and keeps aircraft mission ready.
A retired B1 Lancer is now in a hangar at the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) at Wichita State University (WSU). This particular B-1 airframe will never fly again, but a full-scale, 3D virtual twin of it will, within the virtual environment of Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
More than 250 engineers and students at the university are already working on the project, carefully taking the airframe apart piece by piece. Eventually, NIAR plans to have more than 350 people involved in the virtual 3D reconstruction: scanning each piece, creating detailed CAD models of every part and digitally reassembling the full aircraft, all managed using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
“NIAR was selected as we have a unique set up here and we have the ability to handle every stage of the virtual twin program,” said Melinda Laubach-Hock, director of sustainment at NIAR and NIAR B-1 program manager. “Other facilities may have modelers, scanners and tear down personnel, but we have all of that under one roof. The scale at which we can do this is what differentiates us; we have industrialized the virtual twin process. We have a history of doing military sustainment aircraft and virtual twin work so the US Air Force felt comfortable that we would be capable of handling a project of this scale.”
These types of programs are central to NIAR’s commitment to enhance education with hands-on learning and advance the nation’s aviation industry.
“We’re proud of the applied learning the students are getting from working on this project,” Laubach-Hock said. “They leave us with two to four years of real-world experience and are immediately productive in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform when they join the workforce.”
EXTENDING THE LIFESPAN OF THE B1
The B-1 is an ideal candidate for virtual twin technology. As an airframe designed before the digital age, there is no living record of the complete design. By developing a 3D virtual twin, engineers will inspect the B1 for structural damage, incorporate any known maintenance data or fleet inspection results, and develop predictive analytical tools to identify issues before they arise in the fleet to manage effectively the aircraft for the rest of its lifecycle. A virtual twin also allows for testing prototypes of new parts and repairs, and even supports a change in mission by understanding the impact the new mission may have on the life of the particular B1.
“One of the reasons the B-1 emerged as a candidate for this technology to make the most impact is when it first went into service, it didn’t have a full-scale structural test, which meant that the program officers managed it reactively,” Laubach-Hock said. “They don’t have a good predictor of where the damage is going to occur on the airframe and what impact it could have on the airworthiness of the fleet. They’re also looking to use the B-1 to perform different missions. So, we’re taking an airframe that was supposed to last a certain number of years, we’re extending its lifespan further and we’re increasing its mission readiness and capabilities. This is the perfect time for us take advantage of new technology to give them the data they need to make all these things happen.”
NIAR is an expert in virtual twin technology and a user of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform since 2016 and CATIA for design since the 1990’s. In April of 2017, NIAR and Dassault Systèmes opened the 3DEXPERIENCE Center on the WSU Innovation Campus.
KEEPING TRACK OF ALL PARTS
Before NIAR develops the virtual twin of the B-1, it must first disassemble the entire aircraft and track every piece along the way.
“To the extent of what we have to scan, when we have to scan it and how we coordinate that with the tear-down and reverse engineering group, we’ve learned a lot from previous programs we’ve managed about how to do this most effectively and be successful on a large-scale program like this,” said Shawn Ehrstein, director of Emerging Technologies and CAD/CAM at WSU-NIAR. “The tear-down group has to track everything that comes off the airplane as part of the reverse engineering process. For this particular program, we’ve reformulated what we do and we’re constantly enhancing our approach.”
Additionally, NIAR is taking steps to familiarize itself with the airframe structure before taking it apart, and developing the B-1’s virtual product structure in advance to ensure nothing gets missed.
“We will use the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to establish the entire product structure ahead of time, so we know how everything fits together in the system,” Ehrstein said. “It will allow us to track all the parts and see their status. We’ll have different dashboards to see what’s in work, in check and released, and use the routing capabilities of the platform to control our release process. All of these modeling, product structure and data management processes will be managed through ENOVIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.”
Even if a part does go missing or was never there in the first place, NIAR will use the virtual model to build a complete picture.
“We’re talking about tens of thousands of individual parts that need to be tracked at all points in time,” Laubach-Hock said. “If something is lost along the way, we can compare against what should be there. And sometimes with these legacy platforms we just don’t get a certain part in the first place. It allows us to identify and fill holes in the airframe data.” “As the project progresses, the platform will also help with design revision control,” Ehrstein said.
To learn more about how the US Air Force will use the virtual twin to manage its fleet and transform the B1 going forward, read the full case study on 3ds.com.
