Conceptual design driven digital twin configuration

Since the first introduction of digital twin (DT), its configuration has been disassembled into five compositions: physical entity (PE), virtual entity (VE), twin data, service, and connection. The development of DT depends on the design features of its physical model and practical use case. Nonetheless, its general configuration can still be developed with conceptual design methodology to reduce factors such as complexity, uncertainties, inconvenience, and couplings. This chapter aims to configure DT using a conceptual design methodology. Following the sequence of customer needs (CNs)–functional requirements (FRs)–design parameters (DPs)–design constraints, PE, VE, and twin data center (TDC) are developed. The classification of FRs, DPs, and constraints will be applied to simplify the development. A degree of reduction is introduced as a constraint for the VE, and the diversity of analysis possible among the PE, VE, and TDC is clarified. Development of service is introduced then with the mapping from CNs and FRs from the served product. For the development of connection, existing connection types among compositions are first introduced. Due to attribute similarity, the four conceptual design factors of connection are discussed together for all connection types. To manage the integration of five compositions, working mode, working sequence, and output ratio are introduced. Finally, to illustrate the introduced theory, a case study of an autonomous vehicle with the hypothetical scenario of traffic congestion, vehicle maintenance, and engine monitoring is presented.