Skip to content

Digital Twin of a Wind Turbine

Run the Digital Twin MicroSim Fullscreen

About This MicroSim

A digital twin is a live virtual model of a physical asset. The MicroSim shows a wind turbine on the left and its twin's dashboard of dials on the right, with bidirectional data flow: sensor readings going one way, control commands the other. Drag the wind-speed slider and watch the blades, the twin's dials, and the pitch-angle command all update in lockstep. Click Predict Bearing Failure to run a 14-day time-lapse where vibration creeps up and the twin issues a maintenance alert before the physical turbine would have failed.

Embedding This MicroSim

<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/information-systems/sims/digital-twin-wind-turbine/main.html"
        height="662px" width="100%" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Learning Objectives

By the end of this activity, students will be able to:

  1. Define a digital twin
  2. Identify the four components: physical asset, sensor stream, virtual model, bidirectional control
  3. Explain how a digital twin enables predictive maintenance
  4. Describe the data path from sensor to dashboard

Suggested Activities

  1. Component Match (5 min) — Identify each of the four components in the MicroSim
  2. Predict Drill (10 min) — Run the failure prediction; describe what the operator should do at day 7

References

  • Grieves, M. (2014). Digital Twin: Manufacturing Excellence Through Virtual Factory Replication.