An application framework of digital twin and its case study

With the rapid development of virtual technology and data acquisition technology, digital twin (DT) technology was proposed and gradually become one of the key research directions of intelligent manufacturing. However, the research of DT for product life cycle management is still in the theoretical stage, the application framework and application methods are not clear, and the lack of referable application cases is also a problem. In this paper, the related research and application of DT technology are systematically studied. Then the concept and characteristics of DT are interpreted from both broad sense and narrow sense. On this basis, an application framework of DT for product lifecycle management is proposed. In physical space, the total-elements information perception technology of production is discussed in detail. In the information processing layer, three main function modules, including data storage, data processing and data mapping, are constructed. In virtual space, this paper describes the implementation process of full parametric virtual modeling and the construction idea for DT application subsystems. At last, a DT case of a welding production line is built and studied. Meanwhile, the implementation scheme, application process and effect of this case are detail described to provide reference for enterprises.