Creation of Digital Twins - Key Characteristics of Physical to Virtual Twinning in Mechatronic Product Development

Due to the falling costs of computational resources and the increasing potential of data acquisition, interest in digital twins, a virtual copy of the physical original, and their industrial application is increasing. Nevertheless, there is limited published work on how to support the process of physical to virtual twinning and what its key aspects are. The aim of this study is to present insights with regards to physical to virtual twinning gained from modelling projects in mechatronic product development. We conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with members of modelling projects. In the surveys and interviews we identified how physical products and virtual models were linked, which virtual models were used and which general challenges and key aspects are considered important by the project members. Our findings show that the key characteristics that pose challenges to modelling regarding physical to virtual twinning are model granularity, model validation, and model integration and interconnectivity.