Digital twins of aircraft: A big leap for civil aviation?

It is in this light that some thinking aloud ought to be done on why a few obvious digital technologies have not fully been put to use in civil aviation. One field of concern relates to the flight-data and cockpit voice recorders that commercial aircraft carry. The contents of these ‘black boxes’ are analysed by air-safety experts to identify the causes of an aviation mishap. To ease recovery in case of a crash, they are typically stored in the tail section of a plane that’s considered least prone to damage. 

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Given today’s advances in digital communication, why should these boxes and the data they capture be kept only aboard aircraft? Locating black boxes after an accident has often been an expensive hunt—in terms of time, money and human emotion. Why shouldn’t all that data be transmitted to ground locations? After all, airlines do offer inflight access to the internet at high altitudes.

Some of it is happening. There have been two technical constraints. One is effective communication from a plane travelling at a speed close to that of sound. This has been overcome. 

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The other is the ability of satcom networks to handle the volume of data that a plane would generate. This constraint grows ever less binding. Starlink has placed over 7,500 satellites in orbit around the planet and is ready to roll out new services enabled by their coverage. Eutelsat’s OneWeb, Amazon’s Kuiper and others have big plans too, while China may soon have its own network through a constellation of low-earth-orbit satellites. On the ground, server farms and data storage facilities have proliferated. 

Links exist, but a leap can be taken by the global civil aviation industry. Should planes encounter a transmission squeeze, they could send just the most important flight parameters to a digital cloud. To speed things up, satellite network operators could be obliged—as a condition of their operating licence—to allot a portion of their capacity to aviation data.

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The second aspect that calls for thinking aloud relates to the Digital Twin technology that GE uses for engine maintenance and Airbus for monitoring the performance of some  of its aircraft. A ‘digital twin’ is the virtual representation of a physical object, system or process that constantly absorbs and deploys data from its real-world counterpart for purposes of simulation, prognosis and optimization.

Why should every aircraft not have a digital twin  for each of its systems, assemblies and parts?  

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Sensors aboard planes could constantly relay information on their status to digital twins kept under the watch of engineers (or AI). An entire plane could have a digital twin fed with all manner of real-time readings for a comprehensive system to process, simulate scenarios and offer cues. Live interaction between the physical and digital entities could conceivably sort out several problems. The kinks that cannot be ironed out digitally could be flagged for pilots and engineers. 

Again, the challenge lies in relaying and crunching data. Thankfully, Digital Twin technology has been evolving and the aviation industry has already deployed it  in bits and pieces. The task now is to take this concept to its technological conclusion. Air India and TCS, both under the Tata Group, should be able to find a viable solution.