Validation de jumeau numérique des modèles à éléments finis d’aéronefs hérités

As the military continually extends the service life of aging weapons systems, the need for accurate and validated digital twins of the aircraft structure has become critical. The US military did not buy the original finite element models used to develop these weapon systems which has led to a large number of finite element models being developed from 2D drawing and scanned parts to revers engineer the geometry.
As many of these weapon systems were tested 30, 40, 50 or even 60 years ago, there is no or limited test data available to validate them. SwRI highlight some of their most recent digital twin validation testing for the T-38 and A-10 aircraft. For these effort we made use of a variety of measurement types including deflection potentiometers, strain gages, fiber optic strain and digital image correlation. The test set up, results will be described and lessons learned for digital twin validation will be discussed.
Other SwRI capabilities such as static and fatigue testing of the US Navy’s next generation jammer pod, hypersonic testing, material testing, environmental testing and simulation and modelling will be mentioned.

David Wieland, Directeur principal, Section des structures aérospatiales, SwRI