Development of a scaled digital twin of an airplane wing using a test stand, test aircraft and multi-disciplinary simulation

Kurzfassung

In modern aviation, there is an increasing need for monitoring critical structural components due to various objectives like eco-efficiency and optimized maintenance planning. On the one side, future airplanes are designed with an increased fusion of structure and system components, such as load alleviation systems for wings. This allows new approaches to lightweight constructions. An example in this context is the optimal load-adaptive wing. Therefore, there is an increasing need for accurate methods to check the actual health state of critical objects. On the other side, general digitalization is aspired to automate processes, especially in the aspects of maintenance, repair, and overhaul. The digital twin covers both, digitalization and safety aspects. Through the coupling of physical and virtual data, fatigue damages triggered by alternating strain load should be identified. Suitable inspection methods can then be triggered automatically and based on the actual demand. This paper presents the development of a concept as well as a prototype of a scaled digital twin itself. The digital twin is divided into the three main aspects physical components, virtual components, and the application layer. A model aircraft wing with applied strain gauges and inertial measurement units is used as the physical component. For the virtual components computational fluid dynamics, computational structural dynamics, and fluid-structure interaction are considered. A centralized software runs on the central computation unit. On the software side, interfaces to a high-performance computer and backup storage are provided. On the hardware side, there are interfaces to the main- and reference measurements. The software also presents a graphical user interface to interact with the digital twin. In general, the focus of this paper lies in the provision of a digital infrastructure for data fusion over the entire component life cycle, to realize the virtual image of the physical component. Therefore, processes like data acquisition, management, transfer, and processing are required.