DIGITAL TWIN TECHNOLOGY FOR MANUFACTURING
DIGITAL
TWIN TECHNOLOGY FOR MANUFACTURING
A digital twin is a digital
representation of an intended or actual real-world physical product, system, or
process (a physical twin) that serves as the effectively indistinguishable digital
counterpart of it for practical purposes, such as simulation, integration,
testing, monitoring, and maintenance. The digital twin has been intended from
its initial introduction to be the underlying premise for Product Lifecycle
Management and exists throughout the entire lifecycle, create, build,
operate/support, and dispose, of the physical entity it represents. Since
information is granular, the digital twin representation is determined by the
value based use cases it is created to implement. The digital twin can and does
often exist before there is a physical entity. The use of a digital twin in the
create phase allows the intended entity's entire lifecycle to be modeled and
simulated. A digital twin of an existing entity can, but must not necessarily,
be used in real time and regularly synchronized with the corresponding physical
system.
Though the concept originated earlier,
the first practical definition of a digital twin originated from NASA in an
attempt to improve physical-model simulation of spacecraft in 2010.Digital
twins are the result of continual improvement in the creation of product design
and engineering activities. Product drawings and engineering specifications
have progressed from handmade drafting to computer-aided drafting/computer-aided
design to model-based systems engineering and strict link to signal from the
physical counterpart.
Digital twins are commonly divided into
subtypes that sometimes include: digital twin prototype (DTP), digital twin
instance (DTI), and digital twin aggregate (DTA).The DTP consists of the
designs, analyses, and processes that realize a physical product. The DTP
exists before there is a physical product. The DTI is the digital twin of each
individual instance of the product once it is manufactured. The DTI is linked
with its physical counterpart from the remainder of the physical counterpart's
life. The DTA is the aggregation of DTIs whose data and information can be used
for interrogation about the physical product, prognostics, and learning. The
specific information contained in the digital twins is driven by use cases. The
digital twin is a logical construct, meaning that the actual data and
information may be contained in other applications.
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