Creation Of Digital Twins Research Articles

The Post-Occupancy Digital Twin

Through the application of building information modelling (BIM), the construction industry can now develop digital representations of physical assets. By combining BIM with digital technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), an opportunity is created to link real-time data to digital representations, resulting in the creation of digital twins (DT). A major aspect in the creation of DT involves the ongoing relationship between physical and digital versions of assets through interlinked sensors, generating an opportunity to analyse the performance of the asset and its occupants. The aim of this report was to further understand the effects of implementing these technologies, resulting in the digitalisation of the construction industry. A literature review was undertaken, along with a focused interview questionnaire and an online survey. Results showed that although there was an awareness of the importance of BIM and digital technology within the construction industry, the number of projects implementing these technologies and procedures were low.

Development of a hybrid DLT cloud architecture for the automated use of finite element simulation as a service for fine blanking

Networking and digitization in manufacturing enable novel methods of data-driven analysis and optimization of processes through cross-process data availability. The creation of digital twins plays an important role in this. However, not all data relevant for a digital twin can be measured directly in the process. Therefore, methods are needed that enable the modelling of quantities that are difficult or impossible to measure directly in the process, such as the finite element method. In many companies, however, neither the know-how nor the necessary IT infrastructure for finite element simulations is available. External commissioning processes are also not suitable for achieving the goals of higher productivity and agility pursued with the digitization and networking of manufacturing processes. In this contribution, an architecture is presented that enables the fully automated use of finite element simulation as a service. The architecture is developed using the case study of fine blanking. First, the requirements of the architecture to be created are determined. Important characteristics of the architecture should be scalability as well as interfaces and means of payment suitable for machine communication. In addition, ensuring data integrity is an important requirement when creating the digital twin. Based on the identified requirements, an architecture is then presented that meets these requirements by using cloud computing and distributed ledger technologies and interfaces that can directly process measurement signals from the process and communicate with the architecture. Finally, the capability of the architecture is tested, possible applications and limitations are discussed, and future extensions are considered.

ASPECTS OF BIM-TECHNOLOGY INVOLVEMENT TO CERTIFICATION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

The article deals with the issues of technical and legal description and certification of cultural heritage sites of Ukraine, harmonization of the regulatory framework for establishing parameterized indicators of the registration card and passport of the cultural heritage site – these issues increase its relevance every year. Differentiation of responsibility for the preservation of cultural heritage between the branches of state institutions leads to the loss and decline of the restoration school and archaeological research. The proposed approach of an expert combination of factors establishing the ownership of real estate to be recognized as objects of cultural heritage will allow, at the judicial level, to require the maintenance of these objects in proper technical condition from the owners of such real estate, to turn it into state property for the people of Ukraine. At the same time, digitalization, scanning, and the creation of digital twins of such objects will allow to qualitatively capture the historical links in the development of such objects and to study technological evolution using indirect examples.

Development and introduction of digital double technology technology in aviation technology

The article is devoted to the analysis of the key features of the effective application of digital twin’s technology in aviation technology. In the theoretical part of the article, the authors define the purpose of developing a digital double, which is to provide replacement or significant reduction of expensive full-scale stands and flight tests through the use of precision and certified computational physical and mathematical models. The structural composition of the technologies included in the concept of the digital double is given. The research part analyzes the use of digital twin’s technology within the unique digital environment of a «Virtual high-tech enterprise», combining a unique practice-oriented training of specialists with the possibility of organizing joint work on projects of information technology improvements. The results of the study consider the components of the 3D CAE platform used by specialists to solve many problems in the field of engineering analysis and the creation of digital twins.

СПЕЦИАЛИЗАЦИЯ КАК СИСТЕМНЫЙ ИНСТРУМЕНТ РАЗВИТИЯ ШВЕЙНОЙ ПРОМЫШЛЕННОСТИ В УСЛОВИЯХ ЦИФРОВИЗАЦИИ

The development of digital technologies offers a wide range of opportunities to increase production efficiency, which relies on known tools and methods that transform in modern conditions. Many researchers note that the specialization most characteristic of complex knowledge-intensive industries has high prospects and is evident in all sectors of the national economy. Its combination with cooperation and outsourcing brings momentum to the development of both individual enterprises and the industry as a whole. It has been found that in light industry, which had a developed system of specializations, the return to this practice is difficult due to significant changes in the industries related to the liquidation of large mass production enterprises and the lag in the creation of digital twins, which are the basis at the stage of production preparation. Lost in the process of transition to a market economy, large production with a complete cycle is now successfully replaced by specialized small and medium-sized production, using high-performance equipment combined with modern digital technologies. It is obvious that the garment industry has entered a new cycle of development characterized by a high degree of specialization against the background of the application of digital technologies at all stages of the product life cycle. The significant lag in the application of digital technologies at the stage of production of light industry products is overcome, especially in the transition to additive technologies. It is noted that the digital shadow complements the information digital twin, which is especially relevant from the point of view of production. The introduction of digital technologies in specialized industries allows to achieve higher productivity and payback of invested capital than in standard production, where such investment is "blurred" due to the lag of related processes of the enterprise. It has been revealed that the modern stage of development of light industry is characterized by the application of fundamentally new technologies based on the creation of a digital twin and digital shadow, which create prerequisites for industrial application of additive technologies in industry. Key words: specialization, cooperation, digitalization, development of light industry

A Blockchain-Based Approach for the Creation of Digital Twins

The rapid advancements in computing, storage, communications, and networking technologies have enabled the creation of Digital Twins (DTs). A DT is a digital representation of a real-world physical component, product, or equipment. A DT can be used for 3-D design, testing, simulation, and prototyping prior to the manufacturing of the physical component. Once a physical component is in operation, a DT can be used for configuration, monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics. It is expected that DTs will gain significant attention in the foreseeable future, and will play a key role in Industry 4.0. However, today’s approaches, systems, and technologies leveraged for the creation of DTs are mostly centralized and fall short of providing trusted data provenance, audit, and traceability. Also, data related to transactions, logs, and history are not secure or tamper-proof. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based creation process of DTs to guarantee secure and trusted traceability, accessibility, and immutability of transactions, logs, and data provenance. Our proposed approach uses smart contracts to govern and track transactions initiated by participants involved in the creation of DTs. Our approach also employs decentralized storage of interplanetary file systems to store and share DTs data. Moreover, we present details on our system design and architecture, implementation, and algorithms. Furthermore, we provide security and cost analysis, and show how our approach fulfills the requirements of DTs process creation. We make the smart contract code for creating DTs publicly available on Github.

Data Link for the Creation of Digital Twins

A digital twin offers various features such as visualizations, simulations with real data, and performance monitoring. Several of these features or parts of them can be implemented employing existing systems storing product data. However, to create a digital twin, these data being scattered to different systems is needed to be merged. For merging data and straightforward linking of these systems, this paper proposes a Data Link. The Data Link offers a single interface to access the systems via an API (Application Programming Interface) gateway and makes all data of the physical product available and accessible. In addition, it stores metadata about the systems and offers a user interface that allows searching the system that contains the required piece of information or implements the needed feature. The Data Link was implemented for an industrial overhead crane bringing operational data, control, and CAD (computer-aided design) models behind a single interface. The example implementation indicated that the Data Link based architecture for digital twins allows easy implementation of digital twins by using existing systems.

A Digital Twin Creation Method for an Opensource Low-cost Changeable Learning Factory

Learning factories demonstrate applications and technology to students in a real industrial environment. While turnkey changeable learning factories are supplied by many vendors, with some digital twin capabilities, they are mostly a closed box, with very little flexibility to change the underlying architecture or technology, hindering the maximum benefit of student hands-on experience. This paper presents a method to build a simulated changeable learning factory and link it to the physical system to create a digital twin. The studied learning factory (LEAF) is an opensource low-cost changeable automated system. The suggested digital environment is ‘RoboDK’, which is a 3D simulation and offline/online programming environment, mainly for industrial robots, but it also offers an open source ‘Python’ programming library, allowing the extension of the capabilities of the software to adapt to LEAF. The method is also using the opensource Modbus TCP and OPC UA industrial communication protocols to establish the connection between the physical modules and the digital objects. The results show a capable digital system that is accurately mirroring the physical system layout and material flow, with a flexible structure to allow future extensions.

Digital twins of objects in the solution of control problems

The paper includes the development analysis for digital representation of objects and processes in the field of production. Authors pay special attention to a description of digital twins (DT) as a key element in a structure of digital transformation tools for production management. The narration covers creation of DT and their groups with known techniques for entity conceptual simulation. There are the new approaches shown as to pressing problems in the comprehensive assessment of a state and administration of production facility’s functioning using digital twins. The considered approaches relate to the comprehensive assessment of an object’s state at any time (in the past, present, future) throughout its life cycle. Authors show that to solve tasks in digital transformation of production processes and management of complex industrial facilities, it makes sense to use the indicators proposed in the paper: system’s internal propensity towards conflicts, its update potential and remaining lifetime. Besides, they conclude that a qualitative analysis of a real entity’s behaviour and its control based on the DT model involve collection and accumulation of all of the available historical data about it, which, in turn, necessitates the creation of special-purpose software for big data processing that support the multidimensional temporal model for organisation of integrated information storages.

Digital twins of mechatronic machine tools for modern manufacturing

The article is devoted to the problem of the development of “digital twins” of technological equipment — it’s specially organized and structured information models. The prospects for the use of digital twins for the organization of digital production and the problems associated with providing an adequate description of real mechatronic technological systems with their help are considered. It is shown that the creation of digital twins of technological equipment is a complex task associated with the integration of information and production technologies; therefore, its main solution is a systematic approach that defines the requirements for mathematical, informational and methodological support of digital productions. The advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to the formation of such models are considered. A combined technique for obtaining digital twins of mechatronic feed drives, forming a system for shaping CNC machines, which uses the results of finite element modelling and experimental data, is proposed. Using the example of drive identification, an experimental result shows the need to develop and implement scientifically based methods for constructing digital twins.

Use of gaming technology to bring bridge inspection to the office

This paper proposes a novel method for bridge inspection that essentially digitises bridges using Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) so that they can be later inspected in a virtual reality (VR) environment. The work uses conventional terrestrial LIDAR together with affordable VR hardware and freely available software development kits originally intended for authoring computer games. The resulting VR app is evaluated for a case study involving a typical masonry bridge, comparing the proposed technique with traditional inspection methods. The new approach promises to be highly effective in terms of interpretation of results, accessibility to critical areas and safety of inspectors. The work represents an important step towards the creation of digital twins of important assets in the built environment. Recent bridge collapse incidents have affected local economies, traffic congestion, and in some extreme cases led to a loss of life. The work is timely as law making agencies are paying greater attention to structural rehabilitation. This paper will be of particular interest to bridge engineers, construction professionals and law makers and could lead to future revisions of bridge inspection processes and standards.

Using Structural and Parametric Polymorphism in the Creation of Digital Twins

This article considers digital twin creation based on structural and parametric polymorphism together with decision table ensembles. A new view of the concept of polymorphism applied to building digital models of physical objects is described. A new approach is proposed for using tables as means of designing digital twins by treating data flows and forming control signals to objects in the engineering system that are defined with metric-system indicator values.

Grain and pore shape analysis and generation of digital twins from digital images

The properties of granular or sintered manufactured materials or natural materials depend on their microstructure. Obtaining meaningful insights on the microstructure of these materials often relies on the correct identification of individual grains and pores. Their direct identification on 3D digital images is challenging but opens the possibility to detailed simulations and accurate predition of material behavior, such as mechanical simulations that depend on the grain orientation. Such simulations give vital information to figure out the most promising designs of manufactured materials such as electrodes or to reach decisions based on reservoir rock properties and determined by Digital Rock Physics. With this motivation, several new algorithms have been integrated into the GeoDict® [1] software. GeoDict’s capabilities to segment 3D scans, e.g. CT or FIB-SEM scans have been expanded to identify also individual grains and pores through the new modules GrainFind and PoreFind that are presented here, together with the option to use the results of GrainFind for the creation of digital twins of granular materials.

Risk analysis in digital twin creation of machine building production

Digital twin is one of instruments of Industry 4.0 in order to effectively manage the enterprise and its activities. However, the digital twin of production application is exposed to various risks. Careful identification of these risks speeds up digital twin creation and implementation process.

Robots with Artificial Intelligence and Spectroscopic Sight in Hi-Tech Labor Market

The artificial intelligence of the robot is the digital double of intelligence of the person capable to training, retraining, self-realization and development of professional and behavioural creative innovative competences and skills. The robot represents a technological and program cognitive complex. The realization of artificial intelligence the robot is enabled on the basis of criterion of preferences of improvement of functional activity by realization of actions of function of usefulness and high-quality selection of extensive statistics of the accumulated professional and behavioural creative innovative competences and skills of the person. Transdectoral digital studies of human, nature, society and production communication enable the creation of digital twins of social services and production of products and the technological process of equipment operation. Digital dupes related to the service sector or production are created for intelligent process and equipment management. Intelligent production management with a digital twin optimizes its operation, increases productivity and competitiveness of products according to quality and price. Human digital twins provide services in the social sphere and in space. Training of digital twins in professional competences is carried out on the basis of communicative associative logic of technological thinking by cognitive methods. Cognitive psychology experts investigating the effectiveness of machine learning techniques offer a new approach that allows artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology to be combined. This approach provides pre-preparation of neural networks from accumulated data using existing behaviors. The approach combines existing scientific theories of human behavior with the flexibility of neural networks to make better decisions made by humans in space and in extreme situations. From a practical point of view, this makes it possible to more accurately determine the behavior of a human digital twin in space and in extreme situations. The spectroscopic sight of the robot perceives objects and objects of their range of frequencies. For training of the robot in recognition of objects and objects the frequency spectral technology of machine learning is used. The spectroscopic sight perceives a range of radiations of objects, and the artificial trained neural network distinguishes them on a range.

A Survey on Digital Twin: Definitions, Characteristics, Applications, and Design Implications

When, in 1956, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was officially declared a research field, no one would have ever predicted the huge influence and impact its description, prediction, and prescription capabilities were going to have on our daily lives. In parallel to continuous advances in AI, the past decade has seen the spread of broadband and ubiquitous connectivity, (embedded) sensors collecting descriptive high dimensional data, and improvements in big data processing techniques and cloud computing. The joint usage of such technologies has led to the creation of digital twins, artificial intelligent virtual replicas of physical systems. Digital Twin (DT) technology is nowadays being developed and commercialized to optimize several manufacturing and aviation processes, while in the healthcare and medicine fields this technology is still at its early development stage. This paper presents the results of a study focused on the analysis of the state-of-the-art definitions of DT, the investigation of the main characteristics that a DT should possess, and the exploration of the domains in which DT applications are currently being developed. The design implications derived from the study are then presented: they focus on socio-technical design aspects and DT lifecycle. Open issues and challenges that require to be addressed in the future are finally discussed.

Value Chain Modeling in Digital Strategic Management

The importance of digital strategic management development is confrmed by the growth of the information and communication sector of economy worldwide. The results of the survey of the companies digital transformation of companies nowadays show that new business models are formed on the digital platforms and are based on the processes of buying and selling not only goods and/or services but also the information about the customers themselves. The article proves that a digital platform as a technological exchange tool in modern economy provides for the intermediation processes, supporting coordination at the market and creating value added on the basis of digital cooperation. The authors develop a methodological approach to the increase of strategic management tasks effectiveness taking into account the confrmation of the needs of value added chain. This is achieved by creation of digital twins of business and technological processes which are realized on the basis of block chain technology or on the acyclic graph. Within the defned task for modeling it is technically possible to create the models which perform the operation-by-operation analysis of interaction in the value added chains. However the more effective way to model business activity is to use the process approach when a business process and a value added chain are completely identical with their digital twins. Digital twins permit to make a design and a model of value added functioning before launching a real business process which could greatly change the digital strategic management which is now still under formation. Such modeling of value added conform to market principles, and a digital platform by itself is not a replacement of the market but rather the most effective intermediary. The analysis of existing approaches reveals the following unsolved problems: frst, the absence of direct interconnection between the expenses on digitalization and the results received with the use of digital platforms, and second, information is not singled out as a separate expense category in cost accounting, management and control regardless of the considerable percentage increase of an enterprise expenses on cloud computing service and technology. The authors model the newly created value in digital environment by a) defning a service (not fnished goods) as an integrating element which is typical of digital economy; b) singling out the variants of market cooperation with the use of platforms on the basis of traditional contracts, agreements “by default”, registered users of the platforms, smart contracts; c) choosing basic parameters — investments in the capital which is aggregated by the process and the costs of operating activity participants (by technological limits) supplemented by semi fixed costs; d) using the concept of limits to represent operating activity which is sensitive to special features and proportions among separate stages of a technological process and introducing two information limits (“Data collection, storage and processing” and “Digital representation and market design”) which resulted in creation of the information and communication costs accounting object. The results of the modeling show that a coordination effect is in non-linear dependence on the share of the capital invested by the organizers of the process. This can be used in the search for optimal variants of cooperation platform design and for the investment proftability target management when forming value added chains.

Resource virtualization: A core technology for developing cyber-physical production systems

Smart factory in the context of Industry 4.0 is the next wave of smart manufacturing solution to empower companies to rapidly configure manufacturing facilities and processes to enable the fast production of individualized products at change scales. A key enabling technology for developing a smart factory is resource virtualization or creation of digital twins. The presented research fills the gap that the industry needs a practical methodology to enable themselves to easily virtualize their manufacturing assets for developing a smart factory solution. A test-driven resource virtualization framework is proposed as the recommendation for the industry to adopt to create digital twins for a smart factory. The proposed framework draws inspiration from past resource virtualization outcomes with special attention paid to the usability of the proposed framework in a business environment. It provides a straightforward process for companies to create digital twins by specifying the digital twin hierarchy, the information to be modeled, and the modeling method. To validate the proposed framework, a case study was undertaken at an international company, to create digital twins for all their manufacturing resources. The testing result showed that the proposed resource virtualization framework and developed tools are easy to use in a practical business environment to virtualize complex factory setups in the cyberspace.

Digital twin – Proof of concept

Miniaturization and price decline enable the integration of information, communication and sensor technologies into virtually any product. Products become able to sense their own state as well as the state of their environment. Paired with the ability to process and communicate this data allows for the creation of digital twins. The digital twin is a comprehensive digital representation of an individual product that will play an integral role in a fully digitalized product life cycle. To prove the digital twin concept a cyber-physical bending beam test bench was developed at DiK research lab.