Mikio Sakai
University of Tokyo
The remarkable development of information and communication technology makes it possible to realize the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” The industrial revolution drastically changes manufacturing by introducing the digital twin or the Cyber-Physical System. In the digital twin, cyber and physical spaces are highly integrated by digital technologies. The role of modeling and simulation becomes extremely important in the digital twin. Digital twin-based manufacturing will be positively used in powder products. The Discrete Element Method (DEM) will be employed to construct a cyber-space in a powder process. What technologies are essential in the development of the DEM-based digital twin? Probably, a flexible wall boundary model to reflect the minute change, a scaling-law model to reduce the calculation time, accurate modeling for multi-phase flows, verification & validation, analytical models for calculation results (big data), and a reduced order model would be important. To realize the digital twin for the powder processes, the author’s group has developed several valuable technologies such as signed distance function-based wall boundary model, coarse-grained DEM, DEM coupled with Volume of Fluid, and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition. The adequacy of these technologies has been proved through the validation tests. A combination of the above models and analytical approaches will contribute to the realization of the digital twin.
