Digital Twin Development for the Heat Transfer Process under Conceptual Uncertainty

Abstract

Relevance. Industrial development is characterized by the active introduction of cyber-physical systems, a key element of which is digital twins. Digital twins make it possible to improve the efficiency of technological process management, ensure the prediction of equipment operating modes, optimize energy consumption, and reduce operating costs. Water heaters are an important component of heat generation and consumption systems in industrial facilities, which necessitates the creation of adequate models capable of accurately reflecting real heat exchange processes. However, analytical models of such equipment often contain uncertain parameters, which reduces the accuracy of modeling and complicates their practical application without additional identification.

Purpose of the publication is to develop a water heater digital twin based on an analytical model adapted to real heat exchange conditions by identifying uncertain parameters. The analytical model is considered as a basic example that can be generalized for different types of heat exchange equipment.

Methods. The work uses analytical modeling of thermal processes and passive identification methods of mathematical model parameters. The dynamic model is adapted by minimizing the quadratic quality criterion, which characterizes the deviation of the state space variables of the mathematical model from the experimental data of the real heat transfer process. Numerical methods are used for passive identification.

Results. An analysis of the analytical mathematical model of a water heater was carried out and four uncertain parameters were identified that need to be refined to ensure the adequacy of the model. These parameters include material flows rates and heat transfer coefficients that determine the intensity of the heat flow through the heat exchange surface of the device. Based on numerical modeling, it is shown that the task of identifying uncertain coefficients is single-extreme in nature, which ensures the stability of optimization results and the possibility of applying standard numerical methods. The results of numerical modeling confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach to adapting the analytical model and developing a digital twin of a water heater.

Conclusions. The proposed approach to the digital twin development of a water heater provides an adequate reproduction of the real heat exchange process and can be used as part of industrial enterprises cyber-physical systems. The considered identification method can be easily extended to other types of heat exchange equipment used in heat generation and consumption systems.