Using Digital Twins to Support a Safer and More Sustainable Industry Digital twins have in recent years received increasingly more attention as their value creation has become more apparent when utilised in an efficient manner. More are realizing that an efficient use of digital twins might be the key to not only a more optimised future, but also in supporting other important aspects in the industry. By Nadir Azam and Anders Andreasen, Ramboll
There are many understandings of what a digital twin is and what it is not. In this article, a digital twin is understood as a virtual representation of an object or system that potentially spans its lifecycle, can be updated from real-time data, and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision-making. A digital twin consists of several facets and layers, which may separately or combined contribute to increased value in their own way within different disciplines. In this article, we will focus on showing how digital twins specific for structural integrity, referred to in this article as True Digital Twin, and process simulations, referred to as Process Digital Twin, have been used to create value and support a safer, more optimised, and sustainable industry.
Why use digital twins? There are several quantifiable and unquantifiable benefits of using a digital twin. The True Digital Twin technology, focusing on structural integrity of structures, has demonstrated its value throughout the past 25 years. It enables cost reduction, provides safer operation, and supports sustainability by allowing for optimisation of operational performance and life cycle management. These benefits are highly valuable in for example lifetime extension projects where the technology may be the differentiator between being able to reuse existing 6 | MED OIL & GAS
structures or having to decommission and build new ones. The technology may at the same time provide invaluable information in time of need, for example during expected or unexpected critical events such as storms, ship impacts, vibrations etc. The True Digital Twin technology allows for moving from costly and time-consuming experimental testing in the laboratory to cost-reducing full-scale testing in the field under real operational conditions, which enables safer and more cost-efficient operation of the asset. Utilising a digital twin for process simulations can enable optimisation and offers unparalleled insight and facilitates increase in revenue, reduction in OPEX and more importantly reduced greenhouse gas emission footprint. The methodology presented in this article can be applied for brownfield optimisation as well as for basic design of greenfield facilities. In the design phase, the method can assist in choosing the best process scheme and selecting favourable operating conditions for minimisation of both CAPEX and OPEX. Another interesting and increasingly important area is lifetime extension and maximising the usability of existing facilities for tie-backs through detailed bottleneck identification studies.
Structural integrity: True Digital Twin Ramboll combines digitalisation with innovative structural health monitoring to create the True Digital Twin for structures. The technology is a state-of-the-art methodology to facilitate coupling between the real physical conditions and their structural analysis models, which captures the real-life behaviour of structures in real-time. The True Digital Twin technology has several applications within optimised operational performance and life cycle management. Specific use cases include among others lifetime extension projects, root cause analyses, uncovering knowledge gaps, detection of changes, and predictive maintenance.
Methodology The value creation expected from a True Digital Twin starts already in the specification of a structural health monitoring system as illustrated in figure 1. It is critical that the sensors defined are up to the required task and placed at the right locations to fulfil the overall purpose and objectives. There are several parameters to consider and evaluate when specifying a structural health monitoring system with the purpose of utilising it within structural integrity assessments. These parameters for the sensors include
