Digitization in Turbomachinery Manufacturing

For many manufacturing companies in the turbomachinery sector, new questions are arising concerning the future of production technology. In addition to the discussions about the current economic crisis, there are important debates on climate change and energy system transformation and the challenges they pose for future production. One thing is certain: Those who want to survive will have to think about how value-added chains can be optimized even more and how production processes can be designed even more efficient.

Digitalization in the sense of "Industry 4.0" offers good and important approaches. Companies need to be able to adapt quickly to changes. In addition, they should produce in a resource- and cost-efficient manner. They are able to do all this particularly well if they have the necessary data for analyses and forecasts.

Industry 4.0 in turbomachinery manufacturing

An important basis for Industry 4.0 is the networking and adaptivity of production processes. Through the continuous exchange of information between machines, plants, people and the product, measures for process stabilization can be taken in real time. The correct and targeted interpretation of the large amount of data ("Big Data") is crucial.

In the field of turbomachinery manufacturing, we are researching various approaches to developing applications for production processes. In this way, production errors can be reduced or even avoided in real time.

The digital twin for engine components

The collected data serve as a basis for the creation of a virtual image of the engine component. This concept is called "digital twin". All production and sensor data are stored individually for each product in the Digital Twin, which thus contains a complete production history, including project and order data. The extended product data models make relevant data of the production history available for analysis, thus accelerating process development and optimization in individual and series production. The data stored in the virtual model can also be used to record and analyze the current status of an engine component during maintenance work.

What we offer

The Fraunhofer IPT is the ideal partner in the context of Industry 4.0. On several levels, we conduct research on data acquisition during the manufacturing process using special sensors and on the further processing of the data using analytical models. For our customers, we design and simulate both individual production steps and complete process chains, develop new ones and optimize existing process chains.