A review of digital twin technology for electromechanical products: Evolution focus throughout key lifecycle phases

The digitalization of electromechanical products creates numerous virtual resources throughout the lifecycle, which require efficient organization and utilization. Digital twin (DT), one of the most promising emerging technologies in Industry 4.0, presents a real-time mapping and deep integration mode for virtual-physical interaction. The derived high-fidelity digital replica demonstrates powerful capabilities of reproducing scenes, interpreting mechanisms, predicting execution, and guiding decisions in electromechanical product design, manufacturing, operation, and maintenance. However, burgeoning DT concepts, paradigms, and lifecycle applications tend to present differentiated technology foci at different lifecycle phases, which is still unnoticed and without thematic review. Thus, this paper aims to summarize and discern the diverse development of DT and identify the changing DT technology merits and foci in the context of the electromechanical product lifecycle for consolidating and leading relevant research emphases. Through detailed searching and screening, the corpus consisting of 203 documents is constructed. Based on a comprehensive review, the development of DT is overviewed and corresponding internal and external diversity are elucidated. As a core topic, six DT technology foci distributed across three key lifecycle phases are proposed and discussed in depth, including product digital modeling and service interconnection in the concept & design (C & D) phase, DT-enabled processes and DT-oriented resources in the manufacturing phase, DT-based control and prognostics and health management (PHM) in the operation & maintenance (O & M) phase. Further, the observed implementation challenges and potential opportunities are also outlined.