Project page

About the project

DigiTwin was a £5M EPSRC funded programme grant, that ran from February 2018 until September 2023, led by the University of Sheffield in collaboration with the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Liverpool, Southampton & Swansea and ten industrial partners: Airbus, EDF energy, Leonardo Helicopters, LOC engineering, Romax Technology, Schlumberger, Siemens Gamesa, Siemens Turbomachinery, Stirling Dynamics and Ultra Electronics.

The overall aim of the project was to create robustly-validated digital twins for dynamics applications. This is urgently needed to overcome limitations in current industrial practice that increasingly rely on large computer-based models to make critical design and operational decisions for systems such as wind farms, nuclear power stations and aircraft.

The specific research objectives of the project were:

·       Design: specifically to create new design methodologies that can be applied to dynamic systems that lead to significant improvements in confidence based on digital twin concepts

·       Uncertainty management: to fully integrate quantification, propagation and management of uncertainty into the digital twin framework to radically improve the levels of trust available

·       Validation: to ensure that the digital twin framework can be robustly verified and validated

Digitwin aimed to empower industry with the ability to create digital twins as predictive tools for real-world problems that (i) improve design methodology leading to significant cost savings, and (ii) transform uncertainty management of key industrial assets, enabling a step change reduction in the associated operation and management costs. Ultimately, we envisage that the scientific advancements proposed here will revolutionise the engineering design-to-decommission cycle for a wide range of engineering applications of value to the UK.