A Multiscale Digital Twin-Driven Smart Manufacturing System for High Value-Added Products

在对性能增强、重量轻和功能集成的需求不断增长的驱动下，越来越多的下一代产品/部件被设计为具有3D自由形状（即非旋转对称），以集成不同的形状/结构和/或由多种材料制成。例如，自由曲面透镜阵列光伏聚光器、用于改善道路安全的集成汽车抬头显示器;用于自动驾驶车辆的激光雷达（光检测和测距）设备;用于治疗与衰老相关的疾病（如白内障失明、骨关节炎）和拯救生命的微创手术工具，仅举几例。要求的产品公差与其尺寸的比率小于1/10 e-6，即在超精密制造领域。这些产品的设计，制造装配和表征挑战相当大，需要在当前的制造系统中进行一步改变，以实现确保工业效率提高高达25%的雄心勃勃的目标（工业数字化中期报告，2017），因为英国的生产力长期落后于其竞争对手。该项目将从最近完成的EPSRC项目（EP/K 018345/1）开发的独特灵活和可重构混合微制造系统的既定基线开始，并超越最先进的系统建模，数字，控制和自动化技术。其将研究及开发基础科学及技术，以创建新一代智能数字双驱动制造系统，该系统可感知消费者需求，并积极自我优化以定制下一代高性能3D产品，以可持续的方式提高生产力。它将在理解产品设计，制造和计量之间的内在联系方面开辟新的领域，并采用新的产品/工艺指纹方法。第一次，一种数字双驱动自动化方法，它将反馈和前馈控制算法与来自高精度的输入相结合，将在机器级开发制造过程的频率数字孪生，以连接真实的和虚拟系统，并消除机器编码器无法测量的动态误差和热误差，即使机器以极高的操作频率运行，以满足所需的产品通过预测控制的性能。因此，该项目将使基于线性控制理论的制造自动化发生一步变化，使用编码器的半闭环反馈。作为智能制造系统的组成部分，将开发智能多传感在线表面测量和智能装配系统，以测量复杂和高动态表面，并精确装配以前难以实现的各种零件。还将开发一种新的多尺度业务建模和系统分析方法，以集成这些智能系统，并获取实时数据，建模，预测产品质量，交付时间，成本，排放，浪费，并在不同的情况下优化未来的性能。SMART的有效性将通过制造选定的示范者来证明，包括微创手术工具，平视显示器，激光雷达和太阳能电池集中器。该联盟将通过知识交流、培训、工业示范和部署，将研究成果转化为工业和社会。在该项目中建立的智能制造统一专业知识库将成为英国行业的“一站式商店”，特别是那些热衷于利用该项目利益的中小企业。

Driven by the ever-increasing demand for performance enhancement, light weight and function integration, more and more next-generation products/components are designed to possess 3D freeform shapes (i.e. non-rotational symmetric), to integrate different shapes/structures and/or to be made of multi-materials. Examples are seen in freeform lens array photovoltaic concentrators, integrated car head-up displays for improving road safety; Lidar (light detection and range) devices for autonomous vehicle; minimal invasive surgery tools for curing aging related diseases such as cataract blindness, osteoarthritis, and saving lives, to name a few. The ratio of required product tolerance to its dimension is less than 1 part in 10e-6, i.e. in the ultra-precision manufacturing domain. The design, manufacture assembly and characterisation challenges for these products are considerable, requiring a step change in the current manufacturing system to achieve the ambitious target of securing industrial efficiency gains of up to 25% (Industrial Digitalisation Interim Report, 2017) as Britain's productivity has long lagged behind that of its competitors. The project will start from an established baseline in a unique flexible and reconfigurable hybrid micromanufacturing system developed from a recently completed EPSRC project (EP/K018345/1) and advance beyond state-of-the-art of system modelling, digital, control and automation technologies. It will research and develop the underlying science and technology for the creation of a new generation smart digital twin-driven manufacturing system that can sense consumer needs and actively self-optimise for customised next-generation high performance 3D products with enhanced productivity in a sustainable way. It will break new ground in understanding intrinsic links among product design, manufacturing and metrology with a novel product/process fingerprint approach. For the first time, a digital twin-driven automation approach which combines feedback and feed forward control algorithms with inputs from high-frequency digital twins of manufacturing process at machine level will be developed to bridge the real and virtual systems and eliminate dynamic errors and thermal errors which cannot be measured by machine encoders even the machine is running at an extremely high operational frequency to meet the required product performance through predictive control. As such, this project will make a step change in manufacturing automation which is based on linear control theory using semi-closed-looped feedback from encoders. As building blocks of the smart manufacturing system, smart multi-sense in-line surface metrology and smart assembly system will be developed to measure complex and high dynamic surface and to precision assemble large variety of parts that are difficulty to achieve before. A novel multiscale business modelling and system analysis approach will also be developed to allow integration of these smart systems and take the live data, model, predict product quality, delivery time, cost, emission, waste, and optimise the performance into the future in different scenarios. The effectiveness of the SMART will be demonstrated through manufacturing the selected demonstrators including minimal invasive surgery tools, Head-up displays, Lidar and solar cell concentrators. The consortium will transform the research outcome to industry and our society through knowledge exchange, training, industrial demonstration and deployment. A unified expertise pool in smart manufacturing established in this project will be a "one-stop-shop" for the UK industry, particularly SMEs, who are keen to exploit the benefit of the project.