Purdue University is taking manufacturers somewhere they have never been: inside a blast furnace.
The university’s physics-based, data-driven, next-generation Integrated Virtual Blast Furnace (IVBF) mirrors a blast furnace, enabling an unprecedented interior view and providing an example of how manufacturing is embracing digital twin technology. Touted for its transformative impact on quality, agility, and competitiveness, digital twin technology is also helping to bridge the gap between a shrinking skilled workforce and the increasing complexity of modern manufacturing processes.
“With the IVBF, we can not only mimic the structure of a blast furnace, but we can mimic the physics, see the flow, know what the temperature is at any location inside the furnace,” said Professor Chenn Zhou, director of the Purdue University Northwest (PNW) Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation (CIVS), which spearheads the IVBF project. “Using it for design, optimization, troubleshooting, scaling up of new technologies, and real-time monitoring, we can do more efficient furnace operation and more effective worker training to save money and reduce downtime.”
With U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funding, the CIVS team is using the IVBF to find methods to improve steelmaking efficiency and develop a virtual training model to provide what they call “critically needed workforce development within the steel industry.”
The IVBF gives operators and engineers skills needed to implement new technology and provides a “window” to look inside a space that, because of its size and temperatures (which can hit nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit), poses enormous hurdles.
“It’s very challenging to take measurements inside a blast furnace,” Zhou said. “Now we can see and do virtual measurements.”
By relying on physics and data, she added, workers don’t have to depend on trial and error, which can be expensive and dangerous. The IVBF uses machine learning and a database of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling that was developed and used to simulate blast furnaces offline for more than 20 years at PNW, enabling people to work better, Zhou said, because they can safely “get inside.”
That inside look allows operators and engineers to conduct real-time monitoring, predictions, and simulations to determine the operating conditions that can best deliver energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Dr. Tyamo Okosun, CIVS’s associate director for research and the IVBF project’s principal investigator, said: “This tool — a window into the blast furnace — draws upon the wealth of data collected by sensors and combines it with physics-based CFD modeling to optimize the process. It also opens doors to lower-emission operating conditions using new technologies like hydrogen injection or partial electrification.”
Virtual representations of physical products, systems, or processes, digital twins are used in myriad ways. And adoption in the manufacturing sector is moving fast.
A recent study found that more than a quarter — 29% — of manufacturers worldwide had already fully or partially implemented digital twin strategies.
And early in 2025, the Commerce Department announced $285 million in funding for a CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute for digital twins. The Semiconductor Manufacturing and Advanced Research with Twins USA (SMART USA) Institute will join a network of 17 other institutes — including MxD — designed to accelerate U.S. manufacturing competitiveness. It will focus, the Commerce Department said, on ways “to more rapidly develop, validate, and use digital twins to improve domestic semiconductor design, manufacturing, advanced packaging, assembly, and test processes.”
The goal at Purdue, an MxD member, is to use digital twin technology to deliver a cutting-edge solution that will benefit blast furnaces in Indiana, the nation’s top steel producer, and throughout the United States — as well as benefiting the workers who keep the furnaces running.
In a recent interview with DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Zhou said CIVS simulation and visualization capabilities are helping to train a workforce for future industrial processes and keep people safe by providing “safety and process training simulators that are authentic, immersive, interactive, and based on real phenomena and scenarios.”
At MxD, recent digital twin highlights include:
- MxD’s “Lungs-in-the-Loop,” which demonstrates how digital twin technology can accelerate medical device manufacturing advances, is featured on the MxD Factory Floor in Chicago and was chosen as a Manufacturing Leadership Awards 2024 Finalist.
- MxD, Siemens and Applied Dynamics International (ADI) are collaborating on the first-of-its-kind Open Process Automation (OPA) Testbed. Being built on MxD’s Factory Floor, the testbed will showcase the advantages of OPA and demonstrate the value that digital twin and machine learning technologies can deliver for manufacturers.