Paul Witherell
Measurement Science for Additive Manufacturing Program
Engineering Lab
NIST
Presenting in Track 2: Advanced Design and Information Technologies
Presentation Title: Modeling with a Purpose: Developing and Leveraging Digital Twins in a Manufacturing Environment
Abstract: Digital twins are being heralded as a promising means of gaining new insights into physical things through detailed and immersive virtual representations. In a world with increasingly intricate systems and behaviors, and where data has become ubiquitous, digital twins offer new solutions to increasingly complex challenges. Through premises such as these digital twins continue to gain universal traction. The draw of real time analytics, augmented with high-performance machine learning and insightful AI, has become a powerful motivator for potential digital twin adopters. In practice, however, digital twins often reveal themselves as undeveloped concepts lacking direction and meaning.
Advanced manufacturing offers quentessential environments in which digital twins are expected to excel. With the promise of improved performance and efficiencies with real time monitoring and feedback control, digital twins in manufacturing present themselves as an attractive solution to many of today's manufacturing challenges. For instance, digital twins in additive manufacturing (AM) offer a means for observing and controlling both machines and processes. Process data curated by the digital twin can help establish the provenance of the part being manufactured and in turn inform the design-to-product transformation. Without a grounded perspective, however, realizations often fall short of expectations.
This presentation will explore the premise and characteristics of successful adaptations and implementations of digital twins in design and manufacturing environments. The role of standards as a means to bring digital twins into focus, supporting transparency, integration, and interoperability, will be discussed. The potential value of purpose-driven, domain-specific, and structured digital twins will be assessed in a multi-scale production scenario driven by additive manufacturing. Through robust definitions, formalized representations, explicit context and a strong sense of purpose, digital twins can begin to live up to their vast potential.
Biography: Dr. Paul W. Witherell is a Mechanical Engineer in the Process Engineering (LCE) Group of the Systems Integration Division (SID) of the Engineering Laboratory (EL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). His primary objectives at NIST are to develop and transfer knowledge to industry, including knowledge about information models for additive manufacturing and system level analysis. Research efforts aim to leverage engineering and information sciences to benefit design flexibility, cost, and cycle times in additive manufacturing. His specific job focus is on identifying integration and technology issues that promote industry acceptance of information models, product representation standards, and open architecture that will enable rapid design-to-product transformations. Dr. Witherell's primary areas of interest are Design for Additive Manufacturing, Digital Thread for Additive Manufacturing, Modeling and Simulation for Additive Manufacturing, Design Optimization, Knowledge Representation in Product Development, Ontology and Semantic Relatedness for Design and Manufacturing, and Sustainable Manufacturing.