Replicating the world in a digital twin with the Supercomputer

Replicating any physical object in every detail, a digital twin, almost in real time: it is one of the great dreams of the managers of Davinci-1, the new supercomputer - among the top 100 most powerful in the world - built by Leonardo in Genoa is the engine 'to push scientific research towards new technological frontiers.

The creation of digital twins, or digital twins, is one of the most interesting technological sectors in recent years and one of the main fields of work of supercomputers such as Davinci-1: "the term digital twin has undergone an evolution - explained Carlo Cavazzoni, Director of the HPC Lab and Head of the Computational Research and Development sector, on the occasion of the presentation of the Polo of competence of Genoa for digitization. "Initially - he added - it was a sort of digital model of a physical object that replicated its functioning based on data collected by sensors applied to that same physical object. From here it was possible to obtain a digital replica through which to analyze the object and also verify its internal states ".

Increased computing power and new increasingly refined algorithms have now allowed an important leap: "digital models that are multicomponent, which bring together several objects, and at the same time multiscale, passing in some situations from a centimeter scale to almost atomic scales ". An example is to create the digital twin of a helicopter: a large machine made up of many parts - blades and rotors, as well as an electrical and hydraulic system - on which to analyze the interactions with the air as well as the resistance of the material or the electrical voltages in the internal circuits. Billions of parameters in continuous transformation.

"One of the great dreams - concluded Cavazzoni - is to allow an engineer to modify a component of such a complex project and see its effects in real time. We are not there but almost. Before Davinci-1 it took weeks, now we are a day. but with the next improvements we hope that the engineer will be able to see his changes in a few moments, in the time of a coffee break ".