Generation of multiphysical state variables in parallel to kinematic motion simulations by means of co-simulation

Abstract

The significance of digital twins in mechanical and plant engineering companies is becoming increasingly important in the course of Industry 4.0 as a cyber-physical system. Digital twins represent a real object in virtual space. The properties of the real object are simulated using structural and behavior models, so that the digital twin represents a spitting image of the real object in virtual space. The structural models and behavioral models are created by modeling the digital twin in different modeling and simulation domains. A common form of the digital twin in mechanical and plant engineering is a digital twin, which is based on a kinematic multibody simulation. The kinematic digital twin can be coupled with industrial controllers and is often used for the virtual commissioning of plants/machines. These digital twins usually represent the kinematic behavior of the plan/machine in an idealized way and neglect the physically determined system dynamics. By extending the digital twin by the generation of state variables of a multiphysical dynamic simulation and the use of these state variables by industrial programmable logic controller (PLCs), advantages arise in the use of the digital twin with respect to virtual commissioning, fault analysis, condition monitoring and simulative optimization of machines and plants. Thus, it is necessary to complement the kinematic digital twin by a multiphysical dynamic simulation and to connect this extended model of the digital twin to PLCs.