Defence of dissertation in the field of Automation, Systems and Control Engineering M.Sc. (Tech.) Gerardo Santillán Martínez

Recent trends in industrial digitalization, have resulted in the development of Digital Twins for process plants. A Digital Twin is a digital replica of an industrial plant, containing the structure of the physical assets of the plant as well as the dynamics describing the operation of its devices and processes. Furthermore, in a simulation- based Digital Twin (SBDT), dynamic first-principles models (FPMs) are used to capture the process plant dynamics. In these applications, the model runs together with the plant, while model adaptation techniques keep the simulation state in the same state as the targeted process. A SBDT can be used for obtaining high-fidelity predictions, for developing operator training simulation systems, for production optimization, or for troubleshooting and failure diagnoses. SBDTs are a holistic and powerful application for supporting the operation of modern industrial plants. However, development of their underlying FPMs remains laborious and expensive. Moreover, integration of SBDTs with the plant could leverage on existing industrial operability standard to seamlessly interface SBDT components with the plant.

In this thesis, these implementation shortcomings are tackled by utilizing a combination of implementation methods proposed in this work. First, laborious FPMs development is addressed by applying an automatic model generation (AMG) method based on deriving 3D plant model information for automatically generating the FPMs of the SBDT. Furthermore, laborious integration between the simulation system and the process plant is addressed by utilizing a method for implementing a lifecycle-wide tracking simulation architecture.

Opponent: Dr Jean-Peter Ylén, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Custos: Professor Valeriy Vyatkin, Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation.

Thesis webpage

Contact information: Gerardo Santillán Martínez, Department of Electrical Engineering, [email protected], +358505010979