Samenvatting
Digital twins are now a subject of growing exploration for enhancing the performance of physical systems as part of Industry 4.0. Often characterized by its components—a physical entity, a virtual entity, and the interconnecting data pathways—the digital twin is commonly defined as a virtual entity that actively synchronizes with the physical entity in real time to exhibit similar system behavior and state for both entities. In this research, we are particularly interested in the virtual entity, which is composed of simulation models created and executed in different simulation engines and in the orchestration engine, which coordinates the execution of these models.Although digital twins are gaining traction in both literature and industry, their development and widespread adoption still face significant challenges. Among these challenges is dealing with the inherent heterogeneity of models and, especially, integrating these models within a digital twin. Considering these challenges, this thesis introduces a method designed to enhance reusability and streamline the glue code generation necessary to interface with different models in a digital twin. The proposed method follows a four-stage process, employing a compositional approach to define interfaces. The approach distinctly separates the composition of the model, its simulation engine and orchestration engine functional interfaces, its communication approach and technology, and the functional verification of interfaces. To ensure broad applicability, these operations are standardized into a common format, facilitating the seamless interchange of models.
This study performs a state-of-practice analysis to identify commonalities between the technologies most often used to run and orchestrate models in digital twins. With these determined, their commonalities are used to define a generic method for the generation of interfaces for heterogeneous models. The method proposes a clear separation of responsibilities between the model and the orchestration technology used, as well as the use of a generic common format to describe the required interfacing information. This approach takes inspiration from co-simulation strategies and treats models as black boxes, which makes it possible to isolate the creation of model interfaces from the orchestration engine.
To evaluate the feasibility of the designed method, this study creates an interface generation tool following the proposed method steps. It then uses this tool to generate interfaces for three simulation formalisms—continuous domain, discrete events, and finite element analysis—and five different technologies—FMI, Matlab, Simulink, FreeCAD, and HLA OpenRTI. The effectiveness of the method is validated by integrating these technologies through the generated interfaces and running them in different scenarios in a co-simulation setting. The results underscore the method’s functional capability to efficiently generate interfaces.
| Datum prijs | 21 aug. 2024 |
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| Originele taal | Engels |
| Begeleider | Loek G.W.A. Cleophas (Afstudeerdocent 1) & David A. Manrique Negrin (Afstudeerdocent 2) |