Digital Engineering: Transformational Tools and Strategies

Dear Colleagues,

Digital engineering is a comprehensive approach to product and system development that integrates digital technologies, tools, and methodologies throughout the entire engineering lifecycle. It involves using digital models, simulations, data analytics, and collaborative platforms to design, test, and optimize products virtually before physical implementation, enabling engineers to reduce development time, minimize costs, and improve product quality by identifying and resolving issues early in the design process. After physical implementation during operations and sustainment, digital engineering provides value through digital twins that monitor real-time system performance, predictive maintenance algorithms that anticipate failures, and data-driven insights that optimize operational efficiency and extend asset lifecycles, while also enabling seamless system upgrades and new technology insertion by allowing engineers to virtually test compatibility, assess integration impacts, and validate performance improvements before implementing changes to operational systems. Digital engineering also facilitates better collaboration across multidisciplinary teams and supports continuous improvement through real-time data feedback and iterative design processes.

Despite its benefits, digital engineering faces significant implementation challenges. This Special Issue invites contributions proposing new, innovative, and original approaches to address digital engineering challenges, including the following:

• Digital engineering transformation in organizations, which requires substantial cultural shifts from traditional engineering practices, extensive workforce retraining, and significant upfront investments in new tools and infrastructure.
• Data integration and interoperability when connecting legacy systems with modern platforms while ensuring data quality, security, and governance; and the development of trustworthy digital twins through formal approaches, including rigorous “fit-for-purpose” analysis, ontology-driven representations, and formal verification and validation (V&V) frameworks.
• The rapid pace of technological change can make it difficult to select and maintain appropriate digital tools, and organizations may face resistance to change from personnel accustomed to established engineering workflows.
• Applications of digital engineering across sectors and disciplines.
• Metrics and maturity models for assessing progress, return on investment (ROI), and organizational readiness in digital engineering implementations.

This Special Issue looks to establish a forum for both academic researchers and field practitioners to contribute their knowledge and discoveries, thereby progressing the current boundaries of both research and applied practice in digital engineering.

Dr. Lawrence Dale Thomas
Dr. Ana Wooley
Dr. Hanumanthrao Kannan
Guest Editors

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