Using SHM for the Representation of Structural Components over Their Service Life Within Digital Twins

Although the interest in the Digital Twin (DT) has grown across industry and academia, only a few concrete proposals for the technical implementation of such a DT have been made. To benefit from the operational assessments and improvements through the use of a DT, the integration of structural analysis should be addressed. To connect DTs to their physical counterparts during the whole service life, changes during the lifetime, e.g., due to fatigue or damage, must be detected, quantified and evaluated. The suitable tool to achieve this goal is Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). This contribution examines the state of the art for DTs in the context of structural applications. Furthermore, the role of SHM as a necessary condition for the realisation of DTs is discussed. With the help of the SHM levels according to Rytter, a method is proposed to select the required information depth for adapting the DT to a changing physical twin. Only after detecting a measurable deviation (Level 1) it is necessary to apply more detailed models to assess changes in the structural behaviour. These considerations are illustrated by the example of a cantilever beam structure.