Session: CIE-10-01 - CAPPD: Product and Process Design Automation and Computational Fabrication

Paper Number: 91300

91300 - Functional Module Identification in Product Digital Twins: A Preliminary Study 

The effect of product architectures on the digital twin (DT) modularity is previously unexplored. The authors present a functional modeling approach to identify the modules that emerge in product DTs in this article. A preliminary study on module identification is presented. A stepwise procedure for functional modeling of the physical twin (PT) followed by module identification based on the functional interdependency with DT is presented.  Six examples of product DT from the literature were chosen, and functional modeling followed by module identification was carried out. Based on the interdependency of modules, two types of modules were observed – discrete modules and integrated modules. The interdependency of the modules varied depending on the twinning purposes of DTs. The DTs purposed for component health monitoring were observed to have more discrete modules than the integrated ones compared to the DTs with remote operation as their primary twinning purpose. It is also observed that the product architectures that are modular in physical twins may not remain modular in their DT. Novel research questions arising from this exploratory study are also discussed in this paper. The study presented here offers researchers in the engineering design community a familiar approach to study novel problems and opens new directions of inquiry.

Presenting Author: Maulik C. Kotecha Texas A&M University

Presenting Author Biography: Maulik Kotecha is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. His broad research area is design theory and methodology. Presently, he is working on developing design processes for digital twins, digital manufacturing, and Industry 4.0.

Authors:

Maulik C. Kotecha Texas A&M University
Devesh Bhasin Mathworks Inc.
David Staack Texas A&M University
Daniel A. Mcadams Texas A&M University