Electrical/Electronic System Verification (EESV) - Digital Twin

The complexity of modern electrical systems has dramatically increased over the last decade. Maintenance experts often need to manage hundreds of advanced processing units and miles of wiring harnesses when they repair or upgrade complex systems. This renaissance in complex electronic systems has not spread to the tools and methods being used for system maintenance. Engineers and technicians must often wade through 100s of pages of paper schematic diagrams. Tracking intricate issues through a maze of hard-to-read, irrelevant, and often out-of-date electrical schematics requires hours of wasted effort, which translates to delayed service schedules and poor service department performance. Specifically, there is a defense need within the AF for an electrical/electronic systems visualization tool technology to allow maintenance/engineering personnel to more rapidly isolate, repair, and conduct analysis on AF Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) and individual components.The contractor team of Anautics Inc., Redshred, and Altair Engineering developed an applied research approach for extracting electronics data, restructuring it, and then ingesting it into modern visualization tools, thereby creating a digital twin of electrical system. The Anautics team will integrate Redshred’s Document AI and Altair Engineering’s EEvision platforms, along with their own Bill of Material(BOM)/additional logistics reference information into a platform called Electronic/Electrical System Visualization (EESV). The Redshred platform was selected to be used to extract and digitally transform schematic symbology and path tracing (new capabilities) from historical USAF artifacts (e.g. OEM provided drawings) in a variety of formats into useable data for incorporation into Altair’s EEVision EESV is projected to reduce maintenance troubleshooting and isolation of faulty wiring, components, or modules by 75%, and cut electronic task certifications by 1/3. . In addition, the EESV should improve communication between maintainers, inspectors, and engineers by 20%Furthermore, EESV will lay the foundation to virtualize the electrical component/system reverse engineering process, marching towards a true digital engineering philosophy, replacing/complimenting physical testing Modeling and Simulation (M&S).M&S offers numerous benefits, including cost and time savings, enhanced safety, improved understanding of complex systems, and the ability to test "what if" scenarios in minimizing re-spin. It allows for experimentation without the risks and costs associated with real-world testing, leading to better-informed decisions and optimized designs These key technology developments will not only launch a more efficient and accurate sustainment actions, but it will be imperative in embracing a digital engineering philosophy in the reverse engineering process.