Chapter 7 - Digital Twin-Driven Prognostics and Health Management

Abstract

Prognostics and health management (PHM) is critical to improve reliability and decrease downtime cost for complex equipment working in harsh environments. With the development of cyber–physical system (CPS), realizing cyber–physical fusion to optimize traditional PHM is an important breakthrough. In this chapter, digital twin (DT), an emerging technology for cyber–physical fusion, is introduced to improve the efficiency and reliability of PHM. A five-dimension DT is constructed to emulate physical equipment thoroughly with high fidelity. Based on the constructed DT, a PHM method consisting of the framework, procedure, and coevolution mechanism that makes efficient use of digital mirroring, continuous interactions, and fused data in DT is presented in detail. The proposed method is applied to the yaw system and the gearbox of a wind turbine (WT).