Oil and Gas digital twins after twenty years. How can they be made sustainable, maintainable and useful?

Abstract

The digital twin offers a potentially powerful way of using simulation to support business and change the way industrial operations are done. The idea of the digital twin is not new but recent changes in information technology make implementation of digital twins a natural next step in the application of simulation technologies. Simulation practitioners will find that their models are increasingly embedded in complex systems that combine simulations with operational data to solve a business problem. However, the successful adoption of this approach is challenging. This paper asks the question: "How can digital twins be made sustainable, maintainable and useful?". We focus primarily on the development of twins in the oil and gas industry. Most academic work in this area has been done in the manufacturing industries. We review this literature and propose a simple model of digital twins. This allows us to identify challenges with current implementations and propose a research agenda that will allow future twins to be sustainable, maintainable and usable.

5-Dimension Cross-Industry Digital Twin Applications Model and Analysis of Digital Twin Classification Terms and Models

“…While the Digital Twin concept has its origin in a productcentric manufacturing environment, the definition has moved over time to a more generic concept, applicable to many more fields of application [11]. Further application domains so far addressed by research are for example Construction [37], [52]- [54], Healthcare [55]- [60], Oil and Gas Industry [61]- [65], and Logistics [19], [66]- [68]. Nevertheless, three main parts have been defined as essential to the Digital Twin concept in numerous research works [3], [6], [12], [69], [70] and are also referred to as the lowest common denominator of the Digital Twin concept in research [8], [9].…”

A Critical Review of Smart Manufacturing & Industry 4.0 Maturity Models: Applicability in the O&G Upstream Industry

“…The O&G industry is still at an early stage with deployment of digital technology and deployment is limited to a few areas leading to sub-optimal benefits from the deployment of the technology [13]. Scope, focus, data integration from different vendors with standardization are also seen as key requirements for any organization to succeed in the deployment of some of the industry 4.0 technologies [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]. Managing cyber threats in the O&G companies would be a step in the right direction help to protect both the physical and virtual facilities in the O&G sector against cyber-attacks [19] as would availability of work force, finance, technological innovations, work conditions, sound logistics system, robust hardware and software systems, skilled operator, robotic and automation systems do [20], [21], [22].…”

Physically sound, self-learning digital twins for sloshing fluids

“…Very few references analyze the possibility of applying the concept of digital twin to fluid mechanics. Among them, we cite the application to drilling fluids in the field of geology, see [6], or an approach for the oil and gas industry [7].…”