This presentation was held at the 2020 NAFEMS UK Conference "Inspiring Innovation through Engineering Simulation". The conference covered topics ranging from traditional FEA and CFD, to new and emerging areas including artificial intelligence, machine learning and EDA.

Resource Abstract

Industry is becoming more complex, geographically distributed and agile. These challenges mean that it is increasingly difficult to operate, communicate effectively and manage complexities without utilising digital frameworks to ensure the right information is presented to the right people at the right time to allow effective decision making.

The concept of digital twins and integrated digital frameworks is well known and reported in literature. There is significant ongoing research into the technology development of digital twins and integrated digital frameworks, supported by the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices and Industry 4.0.

However, the realisation of benefits from these technologies is still in its infancy and concern exists that adoption may be impractical and cost prohibitive.

The UK Government has funded two phases of Digital Reactor Design (DRD) programme, an attempt to take a step towards the realisation of the Integrated Nuclear Digital Environment (INDE), a framework for integrating research, design, test, and operational data with a vision of having a digital twin of each new reactor designed and built in the UK. Through the development of this a proof of principle digital framework for the UK Civil Nuclear industry, a pragmatic and feasible approach has been demonstrated that has broader cross industrial applicability.

As key technical contributors to this innovative programme, this paper discusses examples from the Digital Reactor Design programme and the development of digital frameworks and highlights the vision for such integrated digital systems and their use within highly regulated industry, such as the nuclear sector.

The development path for digital twins is proposed together with a discussion of different levels of digital twin complexity and applications. It also describes practical examples of implementing digital frameworks as well as key lessons learned from involvement in nuclear research programmes and gives insight to wider adoption across multiple industries.