Life-Cycle Considerations for Trusting a Digital Twin for Safety Demonstrations

Trust in evidence produced by the digital twin is crucial for critical decision-making. Establishing trust in the evidence produced by the digital twin require a robust qualification and assurance process of the digital twin. A use case of a digital twin for safety demonstrations is used to determine the need for qualification and assurance process throughout the complete lifecycle for the specific application. A battery system consisting of a battery management system and a battery pack is used as a theoretical case study for identifying specific considerations of the use case. Initially the digital twin require a qualification and assurance process that can extend to rare events and often unobserved states, Modeling the behavior in the presence of physical failures and degradation, corrupt data and other communication issues are crucial for demonstrating the capability of the logic to manage and control the battery system from reaching a failed state. During operation different triggers for updating the digital twin to manage changes in the physical space are identified and considerations for handling the updates are presented. Ultimately, the paper offers a recommendation for managing changes in the digital twin proposing a re-qualification and re-assurance process to be based on the change required in the digital twin.

Keywords: Safety demonstrations, Digital twin, Trustworthiness.

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