Initial situation and motivation:
The ongoing digitalization in the field of industrial energy systems enables a multitude of new applications to increase productivity as well as energy and resource efficiency. The concept of "Digital Twins" (DT) is becoming increasingly important and is considered a key technology for increasing the utility, reliability, sustainability and productivity of an industrial system via services (such as predictive maintenance, automatic fault detection and operational and design optimization). The simulation as a core functionality of a system along its entire life cycle (design, operation and maintenance) is to be ideally exploited and standardized, especially in a 5-dimensional modeling of a DT (5D-DT). Due to the rapid development of digital technologies and ubiquitous availability of data and services, the extension of the originally 3-dimensional modelling, based on physical unit (1), virtual unit (2) and their connection (3), has been proposed in scientific literature. By introducing a data model (4) as a central knowledge base, data fusion and information exchange is captured more comprehensively. The outsourcing of the functions of a DT into a service model (5) is intended to improve benefits and user-friendliness. In sectors such as the automotive industry and aviation, DT concepts are already being implemented successfully in some cases, but there are still hardly any transferable solutions or use cases in the field of energy supply and storage, although there is also enormous potential for DT here. There is a lack of an easy-to-implement, uniform and proven DT model.
Objectives and innovation level:
5DIndustrialTwin develops for the first time a tested 5D-DT for industrial applications and the necessary innovative methods. The application focus is primarily on thermal systems for energy supply and storage. A functional 5D-DT of a thermal energy system is being developed, whereby a fixed-bed generator (FBR) is used in a laboratory environment as a physical unit, which is used for the initial testing of the 5D-DT. The industrial use case is the integration into a steel production process as well as the exploitation of flexible energy marketing via telecontrol. For component modeling and simulation, both physical and data-driven models are used and merged in the 5D-DT approach. Crucial for functional communication and data management and thus the operation of 5D-DT is a comprehensive information model for which a suitable knowledge representation is developed. Methods for holistic operational monitoring, error prediction and design and operational optimization under Remaining Useful Lifetime (RUL) prediction are to be developed for the representation of value chain and tested on the laboratory setup of the 5D-DT.
Results and added value:
For the proof of concept, the DT is instantiated in a laboratory environment and tested experimentally. The results from 5DIndustrialTwin will be evaluated over individual value-added aspects and scaled to a use case in steel production. The DT of the use case contributes to the analysis and optimization of the physical model itself and its process environment. The holistic approach and the generic 5D modelling approach should enable all findings of this project to be transferred to general industrial applications. This proven 5D modelling approach for DT thus creates the basis for implementation in the real process. This will simplify energy and resource efficiency and pave the way to the intelligent energy system of the future.
