How Digital Twin Technology will Transform Fault Diagnosis, Predictive Maintenance and Product Development

Could Arecibo’s Collapse be the Last of its Kind? How Digital Twin Technology will Transform Fault Diagnosis, Predictive Maintenance and Product Development 

As if last year needed any more unhappy news, the global scientific community was dealt a serious blow in its closing weeks when the famed Arecibo radio astronomy observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico collapsed in the middle of rushed efforts to dismantle the doomed dish.

At the time of the collapse, following multiple cable failures weeks’ prior, at least one scientist called the dismantling a “scientific gut punch. The end of an era.”

But what if, in the wreckage of Arecibo, a new era was about to dawn? Thanks to the burgeoning growth of digital twin technology – the process by which physical objects are converted into digital replicas via 3D laser scanning and monitored and modeled with real-time cloud-based data analytics – catastrophic collapses like that which befell Arecibo might never happen again. 

The following article by FARO’s Patrick Bohle, Vice President, Solutions Marketing, delves deeper into the exciting potential digital twin technology holds for a variety of related industrial and consumer applications, transforming fault diagnosis, predictive maintenance and product development, while underscoring its growth potential. 

In just the next few years, in fact, the world’s digital twin market is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 38 percent, reaching $16.4 billion by 2024. About half of that growth, 41 percent, is forecast to occur in North America alone, with the automobile and aerospace industries dominating.

The key to adopting digital twin technology, however, rests with the understanding that a digital twin is not the same as a digital model. Digital models are static representations of physical assets. It’s a technology that’s been in increasing use since the 1980s. A digital twin is a 3D model on steroids, a “living document,” synchronized with the physical asset. If something is changed on that asset, the digital model updates accordingly, accomplished through cloud-based software and the growing variety of Internet of Things (IoT) technology that augment the physical asset. 

As businesses and manufacturers emerge from the global pandemic, outthinking and out maneuvering the competition begins with adopting innovative solutions destined to speed time to decision, distribute better data faster, and share that information with all project stakeholders anywhere in the world, entirely remote.

Applied to the world’s architectural, construction and engineering projects, digital twinning can be expected to deliver numerous benefits – some of which may yet be fully realized today. Read the complete article here to learn more about how digital twin technology stands poised to impact your business – and your profits – in the years and decades ahead.