The landscape of complex system design and engineering stands at a paradigm shift on how future engineered systems will be acquired, designed, manufactured, and fielded. This paradigm shift, referred to as Digital Transformation of Enterprise, proposes digital engineering practice with integrated models across the system life cycle. Digital Engineering is a holistic approach to system design that replaces documents centric practices with digital models, artifacts, and data; beginning with highly abstract conceptual design models to high fidelity manufacturing, maintenance, and operational models. Advanced digital engineering capabilities now make it possible to perform a full spectrum system analysis with connected models throughout the system life cycle, such as analyzing the impact of requirements and conceptual design changes on the system manufacturing and sustainment. Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) has become an essential enabler for Digital Transformation and Digital Engineering in the design and development of complex avionics systems, enabling improved traceability, verification, and system integration.
This tutorial provides a comprehensive introduction to the Digital Transformation Initiative and the evolving Digital Engineering frameworks with a focuses on the role of MBSE via Systems Modeling Language (SysML) as a foundational tool for Digital Engineering in avionics systems. SysML offers a standardized, graphical notation for representing system architecture, behavior, and requirements, facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration and reducing design inconsistencies. Through a structured exploration of SysML diagrams—including requirement, structural, and behavioral views—this tutorial equips engineers with the fundamental knowledge required to implement Digital Engineering methodologies effectively in avionics development. Fundamental concepts of Digital Engineering that include creating digital twins, digital threads, physical twins and multi-fidelity model integration will be introduced. By leveraging Digital Engineering with MBSE, engineers can enhance design efficiency, mitigate integration risks, and improve compliance with industry standards such as ARP4754A. This primer on Digital Transformation serves as a steppingstone for avionics engineers and system architects seeking to adopt digital transformation, bridging the gap between traditional document-based approaches and a fully model-driven engineering paradigm.
