https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/10/13/air-force-stripping-b-1-bomber-down-its-bolts-make-digital-twin.html


One B-1B Lancer bomber is having a lengthy breakdown -- but for good reason.
In partnership with Wichita State University's National Institute of Aviation Research, or NIAR, airmen with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center have been stripping the supersonic heavy payload bomber down to its nuts and bolts and then scanning each part into a computer to make a perfect virtual copy of the aircraft, the Air Force said in a recent release.

The effort to make a B-1 digital twin -- which began in April and will take six years to complete -- will help maintainers understand which parts disintegrate fastest given the aircraft's operational wear and tear and how they can be improved.


"Through the scanning process, we will discover all the places that saw structural failure or damage. It will create a living medical record for the B-1," Lt. Col. Joseph Lay, B-1 Engineering Branch material leader, said in a release.


"We have been scanning the wings, and the wing scans have been helping us understand how to build new repairs for some of the cracks that we have seen in the wings themselves," he said of the aircraft, tail number 85-0092.

The bomber, which retired to the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, in 2002, was manufactured in 1985 and last served with the 128th Bomb Squadron at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. It made the 1,000-mile journey from Arizona to Kansas via flatbed truck for the deconstruction.

The digital twin will help maintainers expedite results and procedures for other B-1s, Lay said.

"We will be able to apply data from aircraft in the field to help us predict areas that are more likely to have structural issues," he explained. "This living virtual model of the B-1's structure will be superimposed with layers of maintenance data, test [and] inspection results, and analysis tools, which can be integrated over the aircraft's life cycle."

Lay added, "We are also currently developing inspection techniques and repairs for areas on the upper fuselage and sharing that data back with the [manufacturer]."

The B-1, originally built by Rockwell, is now a Boeing Co. craft.

The collected data on the wings and fuselage will give maintainers more understanding of "fatigue damage in those areas," Lay said.

The B-1 has the ability to climb thousands of feet into the air, kick back its wings -- thanks to its variable swept-wing design -- and dive low, following the Earth like a jet ski skimming water.

However, last year, officials began telling B-1 pilots to cut back on the low-altitude terrain-following capability, known as TERFLW mode, in an effort to preserve the aircraft's structure.

The B-1 digital twin is just the latest effort to address the bomber's maintenance.

For example, the Lancer was one of the first aircraft named to the service's predictive maintenance experiment, headed by Air Force Materiel Command. Known as the condition-based maintenance technique, or CBM+, the program gives maintainers the ability to see when a part may fail and to schedule a fix before it does.

The B-1 bore the brunt of repetitive deployment cycles over the last decade, most notably to the Middle East, leaving the fleet in poor shape. Over the past year, the airframe has undergone frequent inspections and time compliance technical orders, or TCTOs, which often mandate modifications, comprehensive equipment inspections or installation of new equipment.

Gen. Tim Ray, the Air Force Global Strike commander, said last month that the fleet's readiness is improving, and its recovery and maintenance are well ahead of schedule, thanks to concentrated resources and maintenance.

"On any given day, I probably can fly well over 20 of the B-1s," Ray said, referencing the fleet's mission-capable rate, or the ability to fly at a moment's notice to conduct operations.

By comparison, only about seven of the bombers were ready to deploy in August 2019.




I thought this was an interesting article.  

A 6 year investment and however much money this will cost seems like a significant investment.  I wonder if this a clue they are planning on keeping the BOne around for a bit longer.  I'm also wondering if they will do this with other aircraft.  


ETA:  Needs moar pics.  








-K

Seems like a really good idea.

Great, now China will have a B-1 Rancer

The Chinese will have the plans as fast as they are scanned

I'm sure that already have all the plans.

B1s are beyond cool.

I want a B-1A to be built

The B-1B is amazing but I am greedy and want it to be even faster.

I work near a place where those routinely take off. By far the loudest jet I've ever heard. And yes, very cool.

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BONE

Such a rad airplane.

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I see we’re all on the same page...great way to get B1 blueprints into chinas hands...

China gets the blueprints, Democrat Party politicians get payoffs via standard bribery/money laundering practices: book deals, speaking fees.

Different day, same old treason.

Other than it getting funneled to the Chinese, a pretty cool capability and idea.

That’s one beautiful BONE.

Still one of my favorite aircraft of all time.

Simply amazing.

It's like the F111 Ardvark thought it was a bad bitch then the B1 came along and said fuck you.

Love this plane. One of my favorites.

I'm thinking the B-1R (aka the BoneR) might be what you seek.  

The idea was to put F-22 engines on the B-1 to give it a Mach-2 performance.  I remember talk of putting a huge radar and missiles on it too.  



-K

One of my favorites of all time . I remember going to airshows as a kid and you couldn’t even get near them . You could climb in and all over all kinds of military hardware but not those . It sat out there alone in the distance with barricades around it . You just looked at it from a distance. I remember them flying over the red dirt fields I played in and them flying so low it seemed like if you threw a dirt clod you could almost hit it .

Perfect vehicle for virtual reality maintenance training. By the time they're finished, the Hololens II will almost be an antique and the state of the art will let you walk (crawl) through the aircraft and sit in the cockpit.

Aging airframe is a complex and fascinating problem. The depot takes the Rivet Joint fleet literally down to the stringers on a regular schedule because of their age, value and scarcity. It's incredibly expensive and time consuming.

LOFL

I saw the pair of THE BONES do an afterburner flyover when the B1 pilot crashed and died in Afghanistan.

I was getting coffee in Ballston and heard "BCCCCCCHHHHH"

And I'm like "What the fuck is that?" ::: goes outside :::::

Noise intensifies and then they're banking in front of me just ripping apart the sky as my ear drums break.

It was fucking awesome

Probably less than a month before 9/11, I got to see a high-speed/ low-altitude pass of a B-1 flown from England at the Czech International Air Fest in Hradec Kralovy. WOW, that's a loud SOB.

Bingo

How does the scanning work?

Saw 2 take off at night in shiek isa airbase bahrain. Absolutely awesome and LOUD AS FUCK. They are probably the loudest airplanes in the sky.

That computer storing this information had best be airgapped and have decent security around it or people will be able to download the dang plans soon after they finish inputting them.

Why is this a thing?  Are they going to build more?

They are parting them out at DM  (AMARG)  right now.

Sad but true.

As per OP post:

The effort to make a B-1 digital twin -- which began in April and will take six years to complete -- will help maintainers understand which parts disintegrate fastest given the aircraft's operational wear and tear and how they can be improved.

"Through the scanning process, we will discover all the places that saw structural failure or damage. It will create a living medical record for the B-1," Lt. Col. Joseph Lay, B-1 Engineering Branch material leader, said in a release.

take out in 30 minutes or less

I worked for Rockwell in Palmdale 86-87 as a flight test/checkout mechanic on them. When they did the acceptance flight and had no squawks they would do a flyover in full augmentor with the F106 chase plane indicating AF acceptance of the aircraft. It was wild to be up on the backbone of one ship while they fly over. The city bitched about the noise enough so they stopped that. That being said I wonder why they can’t just use the assembly blue prints to do the same as scanning. Probably a good reason but just curious.

They should just build new ones.  At some point, trying to keep old ones up will be silly expensive.

If China wanted a shitty B1 copy they would have thrown a bundle of cash at the Russians for a few Tu160s.

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B1s flying with Norwegian F35 escorts.

The B1 costs a fortune to keep in the air. And yet it seems they will keep on flying for a good long time because there's nothing else in the US arsenal quite like it.

My first thought.  

Hell I bet they came up with the idea

The tu-95 is even louder.

They are so loud in fact that submarines underwater can hear them if they don't fly too high.

This is the dumbest fucking idea i ever heard.

How many Chinese are on that team and will steal the copy?

They're gay though.

A fucking prop

they should do this as they are building new airplanes real time coming down the assembly line.  

10 years later do it again with the airplane with the highest flight time and compare the 2

Kind of funny when you think that Boeing would give them a 747-8i at cost right now.

I just tried snorting a piece of pretzel out my nose.  Fucker.

That thing is awesome in person and up close. I can't even explain what it is like to stand next to it at an airshow.