Lockheed Martin transforming aerospace and defense using digital twins

Digital twin systems transform business by accelerating holistic understanding, optimal decision-making, and effective action. They use real-time and historical data to represent the past and present, and stimulate predicted futures.

Grant Epling, Senior Staff Project Engineer, Lockheed Martin Digital Transformation, talked about transforming aerospace and defense using digital twins in a seminar hosted by DTC. Lockheed Martin has created technologies that unite disparate and complex systems. The company has a diverse portfolio, spanning aeronautics, rotary and mission systems, missiles and fire control, and space.

Transformation of new and legacy systems can enable joint decision making. With space, air, land, sea, and undersea assets, interconnected battle spaces can be overwhelming in their complexity. In this multifaceted environment, confusion and clutter can easily hinder comprehension. We have developed the GeoTwin of the Earth, and digital twins of platforms.

Digital twin has several components, such as virtual product (or process), physical product (or process), and connection of data and information that ties virtual and real products together, and incorporates advanced analytics. Digital twin provides an accurate description of the object that changes over time.

Lockheed Martin has several digital twin use cases. These are design validation, factory optimization and validation, operational analysis, go green – facility management, fleet maintenance planning and performance improvements, anomaly replay resolution, flight software testing, global logistics, etc.

There are several IIoT technologies at Lockheed Martin facilites. These are AR/VR, drones and thermal imaging, realtime ultrasonic and vibration monitoring, Bluetooth and RFID, 3D scanning, powerplant predictive maintenance, smart buildings HVAC fault detection and diagnostics, condition-based maintenance and work order analytics, etc.

He provided an example of facility management digital twin for smart buildings. The mission was to embed fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) into facilities teams' daily routines to revolutionize how buildings are managed and operated.

Lockheed Martin digital twin maturity model establishes a common approach for a broad range of products. It has method for independently assessing programs’ capabilities to a common standard, and identifying areas for targeted maturation. The objective: to curate a portfolio of mature capabilities that can interoperate in both virtual and physical worlds.

Next, Lockheed Martin is looking for partnerships, DT standards, and DT development strategies. In partnerships, it is looking to tie up with industry (aerospace and defense, and non-aerospace and defense) to drive consistency across threads. With governments (US and non-US), and academia (engineering and non-engineering disciplines.

In DT standards, it is working on DT interoperability standards and DT capabilities periodic table (CPT). In DT development strategies, it is working on the common understanding of Digital Twin concepts and value. Gather and report RoI metrics to increase DT stakeholder support. Establish Digital Threads to lay groundwork for highly connected, concurrent Digital Twins. “Bake in” hooks to enable Digital Threads and Digital Twins early in product lifecycle (automation, APIs, etc.).