Digital Twins for Warship Systems: Technologies, Applications and Challenges

Thanks to the development of new technologies such as the Internet of things, it is possible to consider an in-depth knowledge of the operation of a ship, through its replication in the digital world, both hull, systems and equipment on board. It is a technological challenge due to the complexity of warships. It is necessary to define architectures (storage in the cloud), type of deployment (up to what extend the ship should be sensorized), use or not of open-source platforms, scalability, etc. The physical part connected to the virtual part, with the first sending real data to the second part, allows reliable predictions of the behavior of equipment and systems on board. The digital twin seeks to virtually reproduce the functions of the ship systems, as well as all the conditions involved in the ship's mission (route to follow, maintenance times, modes of navigation and sea conditions).