Samuel Hall
A Digital Twin for resilient geo-infrastructure.
- Email: s.hall9@ncl.ac.uk
Supervisors
- School of Engineering
- School of Computing
Project description
A Digital Twin is a virtual model of a real-world system. It uses recent innovations in areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0. It creates a real-time link between the physical asset and its virtual representation.
Digital twins may be created to couple the thousands of kilometres of roads, railways and flood defences in Great Britain. This allows calibrated simulations of earthworks to produce reliable, real-time predictions about maintenance needs and possible failures.
Failures in geotechnical assets are common (twice weekly) and costly. The cost of failures dwarf that of maintenance. But the timing of these failures is often unpredictable. This makes reliable maintenance planning very difficult.
We currently use computer models to:
- produce weather projections
- predict water flows within a geographical region
- simulate the effects of water pressure on individual assets
While these models help forecast potential failures, they are unaware of real data. They are not connected to one another, limiting the accuracy of their predictions.
In this project, we will couple a Digital Twin for resilient geo-infrastructure to an existing geotechnical asset. We will use real-time sensor data. This will allow for a near live simulation of the asset.
External data sources such as weather forecasts may be connected to the twin. This will increase accuracy of the model. It will allow failure forecast through statistical analysis and machine learning.
Interests
- Music
- Martial arts (kickboxing, Karate, Mauy Thai)
- 3D design and printing
- Robotics
Qualifications
- BSc Hons