Radial Basis Functions Update of Digital Models on Actual Manufactured Shapes

In the mechanical engineering world, there is a growing interest in being able to create so-called “digital twins” to assess the impact to performance or response. Part of the challenge is to be able to include and assess manufactured geometries as opposed to nominal design intent, particularly for components that are sensitive to small shape variations. In this paper, we show how the update of digital models adopted in computer aided engineering (CAE) can be conducted according to a mesh morphing workflow based on radial basis functions (RBF). The CAE mesh of the nominal design is updated onto the actual one as acquired from surveying a manufactured individual. The concept is demonstrated on a practical application, the wing structure of the RIBES experiment, showing how the new proposed method compares with a traditional one based on the reconstruction of the geometrical model.