C4I & Cyber Center

Driving Innovation: DELTA-FORCE steers army vehicles into the digital future

Nathan Kahl — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 18:58:03 +0000

Driving Innovation: DELTA-FORCE steers army vehicles into the digital future Nathan Kahl Wed, 01/29/2025 - 13:58

The U.S. Army relies on numerous ground vehicles for successful operations, requiring vehicles that can navigate a variety of terrains and allow soldiers to be effective and safe. This creates a challenging set of requirements for new vehicle design, engineering, and operations that must be cost-effective.

Ali Raz. Photo by Creative Services

��AV is now an important contributor for researching novel approaches and development of new vehicles, thanks to a $1.6 million grant from the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences under Digital Enterprise Technology for Maintenance and Sustainment Improvements—Phase II effort, sponsored through the Army’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center.

The George Mason project, called DELTA-FORCE (Digital Environments for Life-Cycle Test and Evaluation For Off-Road Combat VEhicles), is a joint effort between the College of Engineering and Computing’s (CEC) Center for Excellence in Command, Control, Communications, Computing, Cyber, and Intelligence and the College of Science’s Center for Collision Safety and Analysis. Ali Raz of the Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) Department is the principal investigator (PI) and Steve Kan, a professor in Mason Science, is the co-PI.

This project aims to develop a comprehensive digital engineering methodology for new vehicle concepts. “It's a very unique opportunity for George Mason in that we're going to be building a complete digital environment for life cycle testing and analysis," Raz said. "Life cycle elements have their own domain-specific models, and analysis tools that are not linked. We are building a digital environment to connect them.”

Steve Kan. Photo by Creative Services

The different phases of the vehicle life cycle, from conceptual design, preliminary design, detailed design, manufacturing, and maintenance, each have their own models and analysis tools that do not “talk” to one another. A key aspect of this project is creating an ontology and model-based systems engineering (MBSE) foundation that will connect the different domain-models, providing a common language for integrating the models and building interfaces in a digital environment.

“In order to produce new advanced complex systems, we need to transition into digital environments; the Department of Defense has been laying the groundwork for that for five years or so,” said Raz. “So essentially we will build a digital twin for modeling the off-road vehicle and environments, that is connected to a physical twin via reverse engineering.”

Kan said that “This project will enable us to work in the digital engineering field in a holistic way by integrating different system-level requirements, design, and performance, to the physics level of materials and geometry using reverse engineering technologies. In this project, we build upon our expertise in automotive and aerospace safety engineering and collaborate with colleagues in both CEC and Mason Science at George Mason to develop this digital engineering platform.”

Raz added that DELTA-FORCE will provide an opportunity through new undergraduate courses for George Mason students to get hands-on experience in building digital twins and conducting analysis.

Although this effort is sponsored by the Department of Defense, its content does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the government; no official endorsement should be inferred..

In This Story

Ali K. Raz

Topics

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

U.S. Department of Defense

Bill Roeting

Marianne Klinker — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 20:38:41 +0000

Bill Roeting Marianne Klinker Wed, 10/06/2021 - 16:38

Director, Rapid Prototyping Research Center
College of Engineering and Computing

Contact Information

Email: wroeting@gmu.edu
Phone: 412 - 716 - 4189

Biography

Professor Roeting’s body of work encompasses battlefield networking and communications interoperability with a specific focus on Special Operation Forces (SOF) and Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACS). Recognizing the value in advanced education in these highly technical areas, Professor Roeting has led an effort to establish the Defense Information System Technology (DIST) curriculum at ��AV. The DIST curriculum has been established within the Bachelors of Applied Sciences (BAS) and Bachelors of Individualized Studies (BIS) degree programs with several concentrations.

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Mason well-represented in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine

John Hollis — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 19:57:56 +0000

Mason well-represented in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine John Hollis Mon, 06/14/2021 - 15:57