Engineering design and the impact of digital technology from computer-aided engineering to industrial metaverses: A perspective

Abstract

Digital technology for engineering design is evolving from computer-aided engineering tools via digital twins to industrial metaverses. These advances are resolving many of the challenges associated with implementing concurrent design and enabling larger design domains to be considered and designs to be developed, reviewed and demonstrated more rapidly and with a wider range of stakeholders. However, the new technology is also creating new challenges associated with confidence in digital representations and with methods of working with a rapidly evolving design. These challenges need to be addressed so that radical new designs of complex systems can be produced quickly to support society in addressing the evolving crisis of climate change.

There are two common approaches to engineering design: the traditional, linear approach that progresses through consecutive stages, with frequent looping back to repeat a stage and iterate the design to resolve an issue identified in a later stage ¹ ; and, concurrent design, sometimes known as integrated product design, in which the design of an entire product is addressed simultaneously. ² Specialist teams often focus on different stages of the linear design process, whereas concurrent design involves multi-functional teams of specialists, each having responsibility in their area of expertise, who collaborate and make decisions together. Concurrency or integration of the design process can occur across the sub-systems and the lifecycle of a product.

The major challenges in employing a concurrent design approach are (i) the dependency on communication within the design team, (ii) the implementation of design reviews and (iii) the compatibility of the tools used by different specialist areas. ³ Computer-aided engineering tools, digital communications and, even, social media have provided instantaneous global communications and the means of sharing design information ⁴ which have allowed geographically-distributed teams of specialist designers to work together routinely as well as enabling ‘follow the sun’ workflows ⁵ ; so, that communications should no longer be an obstruction to concurrent design. Recently, the use of digital twin technology has enabled the concurrent verification of design and manufacturing processes ⁶ which appears to alleviate the second challenge of concurrent design, that is, implementation of design reviews. For complex systems, such as nuclear powerplant, an integrated digital environment encompassing the whole lifecycle of the system has been proposed ⁷ and provides the potential for design concurrency across the lifecycle, that is, consideration of the construction, operation, maintenance, decommissioning and dismantling of the power-plant at the design stage.

Integrated digital environments are evolving both in terminology and capabilities into industrial metaverses. The metaverse is a shared immersive and persistent three-dimensional virtual space where humans can experience life in ways that are impossible in the physical world. ⁸ Industrial metaverses are sectors of the metaverse formed by computational models of an engineering system or collection of systems that can be experienced in ways that are impossible in the physical world. ⁹ Within an industrial metaverse it is possible to create and operate digital representations of complex real-world systems in order to design and demonstrate them prior to realizing them in the physical world, which alleviates or removes the third challenge to concurrent design, that is, the incompatibility of tools used by different specialists, and also enables complex interactions between tightly-coupled sub-systems to be considered. These capabilities will likely revolutionize the design of complex systems, for example, by enabling instantaneous evaluation of the behaviour and performance of the whole engineering system across its entire lifecycle against both design criteria and certification or regulatory requirements. ¹⁰ There are issues of confidence in the computational models and credibility of their predictions to be addressed so that decision-makers, including both designers and regulators, trust the digital representations experienced in an industrial metaverse; however, the advantages of the ability to explore hitherto unthought of design configurations, shortened development timescales and reduced risk are likely to drive rapid adoption of the new technology. In more detail, the three-dimensional virtual world of an industrial metaverse allows designers to explore innovative and radical designs quickly and without consequences in the physical world; so that, instead of incremental changes to tried and tested designs, a wide range of substantially different design options could be explored for relatively small costs in terms of time and resources, and these design options are far more likely to provide solutions that will help address the existential challenges facing society from population growth and climate change. The shared immersive and persistent experience of an industrial metaverse will allow specialists in product realisation, operations, maintenance planning and end-of-life processes to work simultaneously and interactively on the design of a system, which will allow them to identify and solve conflicts more easily through rapidly exploring and agreeing trade-offs. This will lead to more integrated and efficient products as well as to shortened development times. However, the virtual experience in an industrial metaverse will be available to other stakeholders besides the designers of an engineering system. Regulators will be able to conduct comprehensive, immersive and realistic evaluations of the system response of new designs before a physical version is produced, which will reduce the probability of late design changes as well as enabling more reliable risk assessments. At the same time, demonstrations within the industrial metaverse will allow designers to obtain customer and end-user feedback early in the design process ensuring that products match the demand from the market and the needs of society. It is probable that artificial intelligence will be integrated into industrial metaverses in the future and provide suggestions to designers based on existing designs and their performance, which will further accelerate development processes. There is some debate about the level of creativity achievable by artificial intelligence^11,12; however, at a minimum it is capable of aiding creativity by suggesting alternative options. The core role of the design team will likely remain the responsibility of humans and will require multi-functional teams of creative specialists to manage the complexity of integrating many sub-systems combined with consideration of their behaviour and performance during an entire lifecycle within a circular economy.

The concurrency of design across sub-systems and along the lifecycle of a product introduces a multitude of parameters to be considered simultaneously and is likely to create an uncertain and potential turbulent environment as many specialists concurrently refine the design in their area of responsibility. Thus, a major challenge is the creation of a unified method of working to deliver reliable and efficient products quickly that takes advantage of the strengths of both digital tools and human specialists. A number of project management tools have been developed to respond to changing environments, such as Agile project management that provides organisational and workflow patterns for large scale projects, particular in information technology, ¹³ and it is likely that these will need to evolve, perhaps via hybridisation, ¹⁴ to enable effective and stable design processes in a digital environment.

It can be concluded that digital technology for engineering design is advancing rapidly from computer-aided engineering tools and digital communications, including social media, to integrated digital environments that are evolving into industrial metaverses consisting of systems of digital representations that enable designs to be developed and demonstrated to a wide range of stakeholders. The capabilities of existing digital tools, such as digital twins, have already removed many of the previously perceived challenges in implementing concurrent design including communication between designers and implementation of design reviews; while the emergence of industrial metaverse will likely remove incompatibilities associated with tools used by different specialists thus allowing complex interactions between tightly coupled sub-systems to be considered. However, these new capabilities have revealed a new set of challenges associated with trust in the digital representations amongst a wider set of potential stakeholders including regulators, customers and end-users as well as designers, and with methods of working and reviewing in a potential turbulent environment created by rapid and concurrent development of a complex product across both its sub-systems and lifecycle. These challenges need to be addressed to fully utilise the power of the emerging digital technology to support the rapid development of radical new designs of engineering products that will help society meet the existential threats posed by climate change.^15,16