Digital twins are a combination of data analysis, CAD modelling, Finite Element Analysis, and IoT (Internet of Things) technologies. This technologies are all elements of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

An emerging application of digital twins is in the aircraft engine industry. Engine manufacturer GE (General Electric) is developing digital twins of the engines it manufactures. Built into each engine are hundreds of sensors that record data about the temperature, stress, fuel consumption, speed, and other forces and factors. This data is continuously transmitted and incorporated into a digital twin of that unique engine. GE is able to monitor the performance of the engine and use this data to improve the performance, efficiency, as well as identify potential problems, all in real time. If they identify an issue in the digital model, they can alert the aircraft maintenance crew to investigate or repair it. In this way, they are able to optimize maintenance and reduce costly unplanned repair and downtime.

Other examples of digital twins include power generation, wind turbines, and even the city of Singapore. Each of these complex systems uses hundreds or thousands of sensors and data points to continually update a digital model.

Features of Digital Twins

• Sensors collect data which is incorporated into the digital model.
• Sensors are part of the physical design.
• The digital model is continuously updated with sensor data
• Internet of Things (IoT) technology to connects the physical object to the digital model.

Application of Digital Twins

• Used in complex, high performance systems where maintenance and downtime must be managed carefully or minimized
• Predict wear and tear on engine components
• Continuous monitoring can be used to Identify early any possible failure
• Identify possible areas for improvement of efficiency
• Improve the maintenance and repair of cycle of equipment or machines.

After going through the Case study and going through the following presentation text:

• “Today I basically want to do here is I want to show you an example of a digital twin around turbines wind turbines actually and you remember your password right. I do sometimes we haven't practiced this now when this is okay. Digital twins in wind turbines cool so let's let's let's start with a wind turbine so I want to dive a little deeper on the topic of the digital twins and we picked wind turbines here because they're one of the assets work that GE makes and we have thousands of the winter but this is a particular model of a wind turbine that you're looking at here and remember each one of those individual wind turbines that particular wind turbine in this particular wind farm in this particular location each one of them has a digital twin now each one of those wind turbines the model here is about 150 or so sensors to capture everything from the torque on the road to the vibration of the gearbox so interesting information you get a lot of information out of those digital twins and as patrick said that information is accumulated is analyzed by the diesels when you base if you build out that specific twin for the specific wind turbine but importantly it's not only the information the OT information you get from the asset you mix that with other information you have information about the design of the asset or you can add simulation models that describe other things should work information about the service records I can tell you about what went wrong and what to do if something goes wrong all right so you built this rich set of digital twins for each individual wind turbine you put them all together and then predict basically act as a learning platform it makes those individual twins smarter and smarter but basically having them observe their environment and deducing interesting patterns from other the community of all those twins and then feeding back that knowledge to it it tape so tell me how to build this How to build a digital twin thing why would you what would you do with the twin is right so yeah how do I build it what do I do with it yeah so because the twin by itself is a really interesting beast it is it is it is a complex thing that that you need platformer products to build but it's not really an application by itself it is the potential of applications twin sometimes we're in a hackathon actually going on on a boat outside yesterday and today and when I talk to developers I tell them don't start building an application and you want to build this in the industrial internet thing start building a twin because the twin is potentially hundreds of applications and what I'm showing here and the background is one one of those hundreds of application that you can very easily then derive once you have to do it this is a dashboard so what you do with it with a with the dashboard like with the twin you basically take some of the information as codified some of the knowledge there's a grenade and you put it on a dashboard of a sure and this dashboard here is for example some information about the past of this particular one with industrial context as we refer to it you can easily do some KPIs how is it currently doing the present state of this particular one and then for me quite frankly most interesting you can actually try to look into the future use your life inside in this case for example would tell you whether the problem coming in and in this case that is it all right so this is one of the applications that you can build around the desert with building a dashboard cool but there's more all right the fish if you're not satisfied with the one application everybody wants to build a dashboard that the first application is always good you want to see how your equipment is doing but the twin has a lot more potential a lot more information in there so what do you think can do is you can basically dive deeper if you want to know a little bit more about its past it could be for example go in here and you see a breakdown of you know the performance most important pieces then they can deduce information from this one you can see a history of the service records around it so there's a lot of information that has been kind of codified has been extracted that just gives you a better perspective on what happened to the thing before you can dive deeper and you can look into the KPIs you can have a much more detailed breakdown what happened all that information is lurking in the twin you just have to tap you have to make it make it come to the forefront and then again my favorite insight looking into the future we have to pass the context of the present to keep you guys here we look into the future and this is just illustrative what it basically tells you something about based on the models that we that we've devised the information that we've learned from the many many twins out there about the probability of failure of particular elements of the wind turbine what would happen you can play what is games what would happen if I treat this particular parameter how would that impact the outcome the energy produced in this case from the wind solar cool so that's that that's that's Building a digital twin kind of what what you can do is a twin I don't want to leave you without making a living out take it are you gonna geek out a little ello just just a little just as we showed a lot more to to the hackers yesterday but what I wanted to quickly just show you is maybe a little bit of what does it actually look like how do you how do you build such a twin and I don't want to now this is cool okay yeah Patrick likes as I know it I don't want to dive too deep but but so when you go to products that I oh you'll find actually ready-made reference applications we have actually built we have a twin for you actually actually few of them and without diving into any details it's actually quite a complex application its template x you can basically customize it but typically what you do in there is a good for example you would you would write some code to extract information from the twin you might have some other code that basically was it I think it's this one that way if I basically describe the model of the code via the model of the 20 would write some code to beta visualize the twin so so you can see there's a lot of code that that is a highly templatized it's relatively easy to modify it to the applications that you want to build cool well thank you very much thank you very much appreciated thank”.

(How Does a Digital Twin Work? Minds + Machines Europe)

You are required to answer the following questions briefly:

Ques 1. Describe the role of sensors and data in a digital twin system.

Ques 2.What might be some disadvantages and challenges for a manufacturer using a digital twin?

Ques 3.Outline the drawbacks of using any digital model to represent the physical world.

Ques 4. Outline how a digital twin can be incorporated into a quality management process to facilitate the Supply Chain.

Ques 5. How might the concept of a digital twin be applied to other types of products: sports equipment, homewares, tools for Quality Improvement in Supply Chain ?

 

Transcribed Image Text:

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Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Ques 1 Describe the role of sensors and data in a digital twin system In a digital twin system sensors play a crucial role in collecting realtime data from the physical object eg aircraft engine wind ... View the full answer