The DNV Simulation Trust Center (STC), a collaboration platform to build system models and simulations of cyber-physical assets, commonly known as digital twins, has welcomed several pilots during 2022. One of these was with South Korea’s KSOE Digital Technology Research Institute, where the STC was used for the first time to yield the evidence required by class for an approval in principle of a power management system based on model assurance and simulation.
Digitalization is transforming the world. Manufacturers are starting to see the benefit of having digital twin replicas of real assets to predict the effect of changes, thus reducing the need for expensive physical testing.
When running co-simulations, there must be trust in each individual model. Stakeholders have to trust other stakeholders’ models as they incorporate these in system simulations of use cases ranging from the early design phase to commissioning and operation or for testing a specific control system.
But how much of the physical testing can actually be substituted by virtual testing? Other challenges are how to guarantee that the simulation results are tamper-proof and how to store the results securely for use in providing evidence that could be utilized by class services.
Trusted simulation models
The development of the STC is closely linked to the Digital Twin Yard (DTYard) project which is now reaching its end. The DTYard is a Norwegian Research Council funded project where DNV and the partners Kongsberg Maritime and Sintef continued the development towards efficient collaborative simulations for the maritime industry. The STC implements Open Simulation Platform (OSP) technology in an easy-to-use and secure collaboration space where stakeholders can upload and share access to component models, configure system models and run simulations.
If models are used to gain trust in a real physical asset, they must be trusted first. In 2021, DNV released Recommended Practice RP-0513 “Assurance of simulation models”. This covers the provision of a framework for assuring simulation models throughout their lifecycle, depending on the risk from using a simulation model in a specified use case.
In the KSOE pilot, the STC was used as the second key element in the trust chain. The assured models were co-simulated and the simulation results securely stored in the STC. By doing this, both the simulation models and the simulation itself were trusted and the tamper-proof aspect secured, laying the necessary trust ground for DDV-DT (Data Driven Verification – Digital Twin) approval in principle of KSOE’s virtual commissioning system (smart ship notation).
