A decentralized digital engineering asset exchange method empowered by model-based systems engineering and distributed ledger technology

Digital Engineering Asset (DEA) refers to the digital artifacts, information and data involved in the lifecycle of engineering systems. It is challenging to maintain the interoperability and to ensure the security and immutability of DEAs during the exchange process among different stakeholders. Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) provides an efficient tool for improving cross-domain interoperability of DEAs. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) provides a potential solution to the security and immutability problem for DEA exchanges owing to its unique advantages such as tamper-resistance and decentralization. This study proposes a decentralized DEA exchange method by integrating the advantages of MBSE and DLT technologies. A definition of DEA is first presented from perspectives of digital engineering objects, development processes and system architectures. Based on this definition, the MBSE meta-model approach is used to formalize the DEAs. A conceptual DEA marketplace framework is then proposed based on a directed acyclic graph (DAG) structured DLT solution. A prototype of the proposed DEA marketplace is developed and a case study is conducted to verify its feasibility. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method can enable low-cost and high-efficiency DEA exchange.