Digital Engineering and Its Ten Application Outlooks

doi:10.3901/JME.2023.13.193

Abstract

Abstract: Relying on physical methods for planning, research, design, manufacturing, test and use of products or systems is usually constrained by time, space, cost and safety, leading to problems such as long development cycle, high operating costs, delayed response, low intelligence, and difficult system optimization. In order to address the above problems, the theory of digital engineering is introduced, which strives to fully utilize both the 'digital power' and 'intelligence power' to enhance the 'capability'. In this paper, firstly a five-phase maturity model of digital engineering is proposed to better understand, further develop and fully utilize of digital engineering based on the analysis of the current digitalization and intelligentization practices and its future development trends. Then, the 'digital power', 'intelligence power' and 'capability' of digital engineering are defined, and the demands and challenges of digital engineering in the era of New IT are expounded in detail. Furthermore, the architecture of digital engineering is designed, which consists of one 'intelligence center' and four threads (physical thread, model thread, data thread and service thread), and eight key supporting technologies are also put forward. Finally, the application outlooks of digital engineering in ten fields are discussed, including digital nuclear power plant, digital aero-engine, digital satellite internet, digital ocean and marine equipment, digital wind tunnel, digital battlefield, digital city, digital computer numerical control machine, digital energy and digital vehicles, expecting to provide references for the scientific organization, intelligent control and system optimization of complex products and systems throughout lifecycle, as well as the construction of digital earth and the development of digital economy.

Key words: digital engineering, digital twin, systems engineering, artificial intelligence, digital power, intelligence power, capability, complex products, complex systems, lifecycle

CLC Number:

I253

TAO Fei, ZHANG Chenyuan, LIU Weiran, ZHANG He, MA Xin, GAO Pengfei, ZHANG Jiankang. Digital Engineering and Its Ten Application Outlooks[J]. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2023, 59(13): 193-215.

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