{"id":116263,"date":"2020-10-10T18:00:07","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T18:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/uncategorized\/2020\/10\/10\/making-bones-air-force-to-develop-digital-twin-of-b-1-for-damage-prediction\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T13:57:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T13:57:15","slug":"making-bones-air-force-to-develop-digital-twin-of-b-1-for-damage-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/news\/your-military\/2020\/10\/10\/making-bones-air-force-to-develop-digital-twin-of-b-1-for-damage-prediction\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Bones: Air Force to develop \u2018digital twin\u2019 of B-1 for damage prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Air Force is making digital replicas of its aircraft to help make maintenance faster, more effective and to be able to forecast potential problems with its planes in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lt. Col. Joseph Lay, material leader for the B-1 Systems Engineering Branch, and his team have partnered with Wichita State University\u2019s National Institute of Aviation Research, or NIAR, to digitally scan a B-1B Lancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lay told Military Times on Friday the B-1 \u201cdigital twin\u201d project will be the first time a complete scan has been performed on a military aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process began when a B-1 was taken from the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, or AMARG<\/a>, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and sent to NIAR for a complete teardown. AMARG, affectionately known as \u201cthe Boneyard<\/a>,\u201d is where military planes go to retire. The desert site hosts hundreds of military planes and is as a testament to U.S. dominance of skies past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhich means every nut and bolt, all the skin panels are all coming off,\u201d Lay said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to do a complete inspection of the aircraft for us, looking for fatigue cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a heavy aircraft flies, gravity and air turbulence make it feel its weight. Fatigue cracks form on stress points and grow under the load of the jostled plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to find those fatigue cracks and how they\u2019re growing and why they\u2019re growing and prevent them and how we can repair them if we need to,\u201d Lay said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making a digital twin is an opportunity to get inside of a jet and see all of the internal parts not exposed during regular maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis will allow us access to areas we\u2019ve never looked at before,\u201d Lay said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inspection phase began in April and once completed, the B-1 will undergo the digital scanning phase, which can take up to an estimated six years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"B-1B
B-1B Lancer tail number 85-0092 is lifted and placed on flatbed trailers for the 1,000-mile journey to Wichita, Kan., April 24, 2020. The National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University will scan every part of the aircraft to create a digital twin that can be used for research. (U.S. Air Force photo by Daryl Mayer)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The digital scanning<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every component of the B-1 will be painstakingly scanned using laser equipment which triangulates its position on the part to create a digital copy that can then be turned into a 3D model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt creates a digital representation on a computer and then a technician runs a verification against it to make sure that all the points have been scanned and there\u2019s enough data,\u201d Lay said. \u201cAnd then they can take that and turn it into the solid model for manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting at the top of the B-1, the technicians will scan and peel away layers of the plane, then scan again. Rinse and repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a long process,\u201d Lay said. “So, they\u2019re scanning as they go along because we want to make sure we understand how everything is stacked up and put together. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once finished, the Air Force will have a complete digital clone of the B-1 it can use to make predictions about damage the jet could potentially sustain in different scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt can fly right along with the fleet, so we can actually take real-world data and put it into our digital model and see what\u2019s going on in our fleet as a whole,\u201d Lay said. \u201cAnd so what that does for us is allows us to fly ahead of the fleet in the digital environment. I can simulate more hours on that aircraft without ever breaking one and I can see what\u2019s going to happen in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The modeling will allow the Air Force to begin planning repairs before a plane is damaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo I get out of my reactive state, which is what I\u2019m currently in, which means an aircraft breaks then I have to start building and repair it at inspection into a standpoint of \u2018This is the next area we\u2019re pretty sure something\u2019s going to break. Why don\u2019t we plan now for what type of inspection and start planning a type of repair,\u2019\u201d Lay said. \u201cSo this will help us with downtime and we\u2019ll be able to turn jets quicker because we already know what to expect, where to go look, what we should be finding, why it occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having a digital aircraft also means a manufacturer can be given the 3D renderings to have components built more quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the past, all we had was the 2D digital drawings,\u201d Lay said. \u201cA lot of (aircraft technicians) don\u2019t know how to read these ancient, 2D manufacturer drawings anymore. This is an opportunity for us, for once, to have high-fidelity, 3D CAD drawings that can be put right into manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Lay\u2019s team will be the first to digitally scan an entire military aircraft, they\u2019re not the first to use the technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2008, the Air Force announced it was working with Boeing to scan an A-10 wing <\/a>so they could run models on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What\u2019s different for us is that we\u2019re reclaiming an aircraft out of the Boneyard and then tearing it all the way down, having everything scanned and built back up so you get an entire aircraft. Further, we\u2019re taking that to do the loads analysis. We\u2019re going to simulate it actually flying, so that we can understand the future stresses on the airframe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lay said there was interest in making a digital scan of the B-52, the B-1\u2032s sister squadron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The right tool for the job<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another possible use for a digitally cloned plane is virtual reality. Lay and his team have only just begun to imagine a scenario where the technology can be used in regular aircraft maintenance and training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can highlight it in the digital aircraft and he could pull it up on his computer and pull it up on a set of VR goggles and say \u2018OK, I know exactly where I need to be,\u2019 as he walks out to the aircraft he\u2019s going to be working on,\u201d Lay said. \u201cThen we can do the same thing for virtually prototyping repairs. You can do a much better test fit since the aircraft is fully represented in the digital environment. You can actually build a repair and test it, take it to get 3D printed so that our first repair is going to have a much higher level of success of actually working.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Digital aircraft replicas may make maintenance faster, more effective and help forecast potential 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