Digital twin applications in aviation industry: A review.

As a highly secure and reliable system, aviation faces challenges including digital transformation, high production operation costs, low maintenance efficiency, and intensive technology. One of the most beneficial technologies is the digital twin (DT), which can solve the above issues. This paper investigates aviation industry DT from government authorities, industry, and academia. Firstly, it surveys the development of the definition of DT and compares its concepts with the Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, and digital thread etc. Next, it shows the research timeline of aviation DT in the past 10 years by authorities such as Air Force Research Laboratory and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Then, this paper reviews the state-of-the-art research status of DT in the whole lifecycle of the aviation system and concludes that aviation DT is the most widely used in manufacturing and maintenance, and should pay attention to the application of UAV DT. Finally, it summarizes that data fusion, high-fidelity modeling, integration with New IT, and human–machine interaction are the key technologies of aviation DT. The future possible research directions could be digital process twin risk control, interactive DT, and DT data learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]