Research on parallel simulation and digital twin method for temperature control of high and low temperature environment experimental chamber

Abstract High and low temperature environment experimental chamber is a key environmental testing equipment. In the actual operation of the experimental chamber, the distribution pattern and dynamic variation process of the temperature field could not be observed in real-time. To address this issue, a parallel collaborative simulation approach based on MATLAB/Simulink, Fluent, and Python was employed to construct the digital twin system for the experimental chamber. The parallel simulation and digital twin method for temperature control of the experimental chamber aims to replace physical experiments with simulations, while simultaneously enabling real-time monitoring and prediction of the experimental chamber’s operational status. The results of the simulation experiment show that the experimental chamber reaches a stable state at 909 s. The peak temperature in the simulation experiment is 80.18 °C, and the overshoot is 0.23%. The actual experimental results indicate that the experimental chamber reaches a stable state at 953 s. The peak temperature in the actual experiment is 81 °C, and the overshoot is 1.25%. Actual validation experiment results show a 1.02% difference in overshoot compared to the simulation results, and a 44 s difference in system settling time. Temperature simulation results at the measurement points inside the experimental chamber show a maximum relative error of 0.775% compared to the experimental results, demonstrating a small discrepancy between simulation and experiment. The parallel collaborative simulation and digital twin system for experimental chamber can be used to shorten the development cycle and reduce the economic costs of the experimental chamber’s research and development.