Doing More With Less: A Digital Twin of state-of-the-art and emerging high value manufacturing routes for high integrity titanium alloy components

钛合金部件对英国未来的航空航天、能源和电动汽车行业具有重要的战略意义，因为它们具有高强度重量比、优异的抗断裂性和疲劳性能，以及与碳纤维复合材料的兼容性。当前最先进的钛部件通过复杂的非线性开式模具和闭式模具热锻造进行加工，这在不同区域内产生不均匀的微观结构和性能。这需要比最终形状大得多的几何形状，然后加工掉70%的材料，以保持最终零件中的“最佳”微观结构和性能。这种昂贵且浪费的方法导致了全行业的努力，以用更少的材料生产具有更均匀的微观结构和性能分布的部件。例如，许多新兴的粉末衍生制造路线已得到广泛探索。近年来，英国开发的混合快速锻造粉末衍生工艺已显示出生产负担得起的钛合金部件的前景。高价值制造业现在需要工具来客观地告知哪种加工路线是最佳的，无论是最先进的还是新兴的路线，如快速锻造，基于成本，体积，能源消耗，资源使用，而在─新兴的制造技术，如精密熔模铸造和增材制造，在材料和能源使用方面优于锻造，它们可以提高制造速度，但不能产生许多结构关键应用所需的高完整性性能。在本世纪，锻造将继续存在，但它需要有一个21世纪的改造，以更灵活，更经济，更少的浪费与更好的性能产品。工业界认识到，为了使英国制造业保持国际竞争力，我们需要快速和智能的流程支持。对于高完整性的产品，有一个驱动器，以创建物理锻造过程的数字孪生，并授权英国制造商提供（1）更有效，更不保守和负担得起的工艺路线和（2）改进和更一致的属性，以减少设计保守性。由于控制、传感器技术和无损检测表征方法的最新改进，以及对材料行为的物理理解和建模的改进，这一点现在已经成为可能。数字孪生的虚拟世界融合了润滑、刀具磨损、温度和压力动态，以及整个过程的微观结构和性能演变，将是与等效的现实世界系统或物理孪生体最接近的类比。我们现在有基础设施和数据分析方法来创建这个虚拟数字孪生模型。首先，这将为行业提供给定组件的最佳加工路线（即最先进的或快速锻造），使工艺路线的评估成为可能，并允许整个供应链参与组件设计的早期阶段（此时仍然可以通过虚拟数字孪生模型进行廉价更改）。其次，它将使用基于物理的模型和数据分析，为未来的高完整性锻造钛合金部件实现实时生产决策、即时故障排除和验证。从可持续性的角度来看，锻造和压机性能过程中微观结构的数字孪生将使供应链能够通过提供对特定位置属性的更高信心或更有效地利用压机（即，使用较少的能量）来实现设计的性能目标。创建一个可供整个供应链使用的锻造数字孪生模型，将巩固英国在制造高完整性产品方面的世界级声誉，并带来重大的商业投资。

Titanium alloy components are strategically important to the future UK aerospace, energy and electric vehicle sectors owing to their high strength-to-weight ratio, excellent fracture resistance and fatigue properties, and compatibility with carbon fibre composites. Current state-of-the-art titanium components are processed through complex non-linear open-die and closed-die hot forging that generates non-uniform microstructure and properties within different regions. This necessitates significantly larger geometries than the final shape to be forged before 70% of the material is machined away to retain the "optimum" microstructure and property set in the final part. This expensive and wasteful approach has led to a sector-wide effort to produce components with more homogeneous microstructures and property distributions from less material. For example, many emerging powder-derived manufacturing routes have been explored extensively. The UK developed, hybrid FAST-forge powder-derived process has shown promise over recent years to produce affordable titanium alloy components. The high-value manufacturing sector now needs the tools to objectively inform which processing route is optimum, be it state-of-the-art or emerging routes, such as FAST-forge, based on key drivers such as cost, volume, energy consumption, resource use, and in-service properties.Emerging manufacturing techniques such as precision investment casting and additive manufacturing have advantages over forging in terms of material and energy usage and speed of manufacture, but they cannot produce the high integrity properties required for many structure-critical applications. For this century, forging is here to stay, but it needs to have a 21st century makeover to be more agile, economical, less wasteful with better performing products. There is a realisation in industry that in order for UK manufacturing to remain internationally competitive, we need rapid and intelligent process support. For high integrity products there is a drive to create a digital twin of the physical forging process and to empower UK manufacturers to provide a (1) more efficient, less conservative and affordable process route and (2) improved and more consistent properties to reduce design conservatism. This is now possible, owing to recent improvements in control, sensor technology and non-destructive testing characterisation methods, coupled with improved physical understanding and modelling of the material behaviour.The virtual world of a digital twin that incorporates lubrication, tool wear, temperature, and press dynamics, as well as through-process microstructure and property evolution, will be the closest analogy to an equivalent real-world system or physical twin. We now have the infrastructure and data analysis approaches to create this virtual digital twin. Firstly, this will inform industry on the optimum processing route (i.e. state-of-the-art or FAST-forge) for a given component, enable the assessment of process route and allow the whole supply chain to be involved in the early stages of component design (when changes can still be made cheaply through the virtual digital twin). Secondly, it will enable real-time production decisions, instant troubleshooting and validation for future high integrity forged titanium alloy components, using physics-based models and data analytics. From a sustainability standpoint, a digital twin of the microstructure during forging and press performance will enable the supply chain to do more with less material by providing higher confidence in location-specific properties or utilising the press more efficiently (i.e., using less energy) to achieve the property goals of the design. Creating a digital twin of forging, which is accessible to the whole supply chain will consolidate the UK's world class reputation in the manufacturing of high integrity products and lead to significant business investment.