Validity Frame Supported Digital Twin Design of Complex Cyber-Physical Systems

Digital twins, that is, system models that track a specific system instance, enable various new possibilities in the domains of industry 4.0 and Cyber-Physical Systems. At their core, they consist of models and large amounts of data. Those models often abstract away or linearize parts of the system. Thus, to correctly interpret the output data of the digital twin, one must reason about the model's valid operation region. This paper introduces an approach based on the Validity Frames concept to support this validity reasoning and ensure valid model use within the digital twins context. A Validity Frame encapsulates additional validity data of a model, and is especially suited for checking model validity, hence the name. Additionally, the approach also enables a partly automated commissioning of the digital twin. We demonstrate the automated commissioning process with an academic case study.