Digitalization of Aeronautic Painting Shop Floors for Improved Commissioning Activities

Abstract

Industrial commissioning plays a critical role in ensuring the safe and efficient operation of facilities and minimizes downtime and maintenance costs over their lifetime. To extend and adjust commissioning capabilities, Virtual Commissioning uses digital models of devices and processes to verify, validate, and optimize code programming, and component selection. To perform the validation process, a simulation involving control devices and process digital twins is required, leading to inherent computational complexity. Distributed simulation approach allows for simulation of complex systems by breaking down a large simulation into smaller, manageable parts that can be run simultaneously on separate processors, while still preserving the overall behavior and interactions of the system being simulated. This paper presents a distributed Virtual Commissioning solution for a spray paint process presented in UAV painting shop floor. The methodology for developing the implementation is described in detail: greenfield scenario generation, automation process, software toolchain development, selection of communication protocols, re-use of digital twins for extended applications, and complexity analysis. A set of 3d scenarios is used to demonstrate the result’s performance.

Keywords

• virtual commissioning
• automation
• toolchain
• distributed simulation