Digital twin driven smart product design framework

With the advent of new generation information technologies (new IT) in industry and product design, the big data–driven product design era has arrived. However, current research mainly places emphasis on the analysis of physical data rather than the virtual models. In other words, the convergence between product’s physical and virtual spaces is usually absent. Fortunately, digital twin (DT), an emerging and fast-growing technology, provides a promising way to connect and integrate the physical and virtual spaces seamlessly, thus to solve the previous problem efficiently. Therefore this chapter introduces DT into product design and presents a new design method based on the DT approach. First, related theories and technologies of product design are reviewed and the concept of DT is explored. Then a five-dimension DT and its abilities enabled by new IT are proposed. Based on this, a DT-driven smart product design (DTPD) framework is discussed, in terms of key processes and related technologies. Finally, DTPD applications in bicycle and landing gear are presented as two case studies to illustrate the proposed method.