Systematic review of the literature on Digital Twin: a discussion of contributions and a framework proposal

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the definitions, requirements and applications of Digital Twin (DT) models, and for that, a systematic literature review was carried out using Science Direct, Scopus and Web of Science as the bases for the articles. The method used was based on bibliometric analysis of the 332 articles extracted from the bases and a content analysis, which sought to identify contributions, common topics and gaps among the 17 articles that were filtered and identified as relevant to the second objective of this work, the framework proposal. The analyzed sample indicated that authors diverge on the definitions and use different processes to build a DT, models that seek to represent elements of the real environment, which could be products and/or processes/services, with the objective of being a tool for performance monitoring, simulation of scenarios and source of information for decision making. The use of software that often does not have trial licenses or versions for students was also observed in the sample, based on this point and on the analyzed content, an attempt was made to build a conceptual framework for the construction of a DT model in a game engine, using software that does not require licenses.