This episode is brought to you by Dell Technologies.

The digital twin is perhaps the most important development in computer-aided design since digital rendering. It’s more than a way to digitally represent products and the processes that make them, it’s a parallel engineering world, a place where what if scenarios and experiments can be performed to optimize designs and processes. Digital twin is not only a tool that speeds development in engineering, it’s a vital element of engineering risk management, a way to try things that would be unthinkable in the physical world, with the possibility of a high-value payoff.

Artificial intelligence can offer similar benefits to engineering processes, and is already a critical tool to aid in decision-making. What happens at the confluence of these two important technologies? What are the implications of artificial intelligence operating through the digital twin to change the engineering process?

Joining engineering.com on this episode of The Engineering Roundtable are three experts to discuss these implications:

Panelists:

Todd Edmunds, Global CTO Smart Manufacturing, Edge & Digital Twins, Dell Technologies Global Industries
Jason Nassar, Senior Consultant, Product Management, Dell Technologies Edge Solutions
Pieter Van Schalkwyk, CEO of  XMPro

Moderator:

Jim Anderton, Multimedia Content Director, engineering.com

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Dell Technologies can support your digital transformation efforts. Sign up for a free consultation with Dell experts to see how Digital Twins can enhance your AI infrastructure management.

Want to learn more? Watch Dell Technologies’ Industrial Digital Twin demo video on YouTube.

The post Revolutionizing Industry 4.0: Scaling Digital Transformation with AI & Digital Twins appeared first on Engineering.com.

The Scaled Composites Vanguard has taken to the air, and like most designs from Northrop Grumman’s experimental division, it’s different. Small, light in weight and powered by a relatively low power jet engine, the aircraft has the look of a miniature stealth fighter plane, and can carry 2,000 pounds of ordnance, including two air to air missiles in an enclosed weapons bay. The airplane is clearly designed to have a low radar cross-section, essential for survival in any contested airspace today.

For Northrop Grumman, this may be a replay of the company’s low-cost, lightweight fighter concept, a big hit from the early 1960s: the F-5 Freedom Fighter. 

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The post Scaled Composites’ Vanguard makes its first flight  appeared first on Engineering.com.

This video is brought to you by Dassault Systèmes.

To achieve success in manufacturing today, professionals must synchronize the application of capital, labor and equipment in a sort of industrial ballet, where the competing requirements of time, cost and speed are calculated and recalculated on a real-time basis. To get great outcomes, manufacturing processes must be planned carefully, and to stay successful, manufacturers most aggregate, analyze and act on multiple data sets generated by manufacturing processes and by the products themselves.

Knowing what to do with that data, and how to analyze it to generate actionable insight requires tools as complex as the production equipment itself. Simulation to model what if scenarios is now standard, and artificial intelligence is expected to make rapid inroads in manufacturing, and today everyone is talking about the digital twin. But that twin is not the end goal, it’s actually the starting place.

Jim Anderton discusses where manufacturers need to go once they leave that starting line with Mike Buchli,  3DEXPERIENCE WORKS manufacturing expert at Dassault Systèmes.  

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Learn more about how small and medium sized businesses can start benefiting from robotics automation that large enterprises have long enjoyed.

The post Digital transformation is the starting point for the manufacturing marathon appeared first on Engineering.com.

Artificial intelligence is not only widely anticipated but is expected to dramatically change the manufacturing landscape worldwide, forever.

The promise is huge, but to deliver on that promise, manufacturers need to develop coherent strategies for implementation, and more importantly, understand where the use cases exist for AI implementation.

New research from AI software provider IFS suggests that American firms are sceptical of artificial intelligence in its current form.

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The post Manufacturing AI will struggle without focus appeared first on Engineering.com.

Orbital launch services are the key to the commercial development of space. Crude flight gets the headlines, but the vast majority of launches carry communications and Earth resources satellites, and of course, military applications.

But are there too many players in the market? Space X is in the low-cost launcher, but their major market is internal, with Starlink. And with the upcoming retirement of the ISS, the market for crewed flight is uncertain. The market may bifurcate into:
(1) fewer, heavy launch providers; and
(2) multiple small sat launchers with fast reaction capability.

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The post Are there too many space launch providers?  appeared first on Engineering.com.

As software controlling everything from video games to jet airliners has become too complex to make completely error proof, the move to increasing flight automation continues to carry risk. No one knows this more than Boeing, but the fundamental problem of systems that are too complex for humans to check means that safety may ultimately be handed over to artificial intelligence.

First, for checking human generated code, then permitting the code itself, and finally, the piloting of the airplanes themselves. 

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The post Can AI fix Aviation, and Boeing?  appeared first on Engineering.com.

For the 100 years or so of air transport, the form factor of airplanes has been essentially consistent: a fuselage, usually cylindrical, with attached wings and tail.  While relatively simple to build, with a good strength to weight ratio, aerodynamically, this form factor is not the most efficient.

Eliminating the fuselage and building the aircraft as a flying wing has long been recognized as a path to greater efficiency and performance, and since the late 1940s, multiple flying wing designs have been proposed. Very few have made it into hardware, but a form of hybrid concept, called the blended wing body, appears to be a practical way to reduce drag, and consequently fuel burn, and commercial aircraft.  

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The post Blended wing body: the future of air transportation? appeared first on Engineering.com.

There is plenty of talk in the mainstream media about the technical issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, but the real engineering issue is not rooted in pressure vessels, valves or lines. It’s management.

Starliner has launched previously to the international Space Station uncrewed, so the capability for fully autonomous flight exists at Boeing. The current flight was configured for human piloting, so the obvious option for Williams and Wilmore, which is to bring them back with a SpaceX capsule, may become necessary if NASA and Boeing can’t reconfigure Starliner to work around the thruster issues.

The zero risk option? Fly the astronauts back by SpaceX, then fly Starliner back empty, fix the issues, and launch it again. If Starliner returns unharmed, the decision will look like an abundance of caution, but all concerned will come out looking good.

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The post Boeing’s, and NASA’s Dilemma With Starliner  appeared first on Engineering.com.

If successful, Anduril’s new facility may become the prototype for a paradigm shift in armaments design, development, manufacturing and procurement. Swarms of low cost, AI driven and fully autonomous drone weapon systems in the air, on the ground and into the sea, may replace the crewed, highly capable but costly armoured vehicles, aircraft and submarines. Part of conflict in Ukraine may have shown us the way wars will be fought in the future. 

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The post Hyperscale Defense Manufacturing in a Five Million Square Foot Plant  appeared first on Engineering.com.

At RAPID/TCT Los Angeles, additive machine builders, material suppliers, and service vendors gathered to demonstrate the breadth and depth of 3D printing technology. Materials and methods are growing exponentially, and many of them have direct application to the aerospace industry. 

New materials, including composites, are ready for new roles in fuselage, wing and empennage applications, while durable new alloys decrease weight from the fan to the hot section of gas turbines. But even commodity resins are now in focus, as low cost, disposable drone swarms appear to be the next major step forward in combat aviation. 

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Below is the extended version of the video, featuring additional and longer interviews for a more in-depth exploration of the topic:

The post Additive applications in aerospace explode appeared first on Engineering.com.