Feasibility study of using digital twins for conceptual design of air-quenching processes

The concepts of digital twins (DTs) have been widely studied to predict system performance, shorten design cycles, and implement preventive maintenance, but mainly, in large-scale enterprises. It is extremely beneficial to the whole manufacturing sector, since DTs can be readily implemented in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with basic computer aided engineering (CAE) tools; over 95% enterprises are SMEs. This paper aims to prove the feasibility of using commercial CAE tools, such as SolidWorks Simulation, to design air-quenching processes for SMEs. SMEs can benefit to explore new business opportunities, reduce system design cycle, and improve existing air-quenching processes. To our knowledge, it will be the first work of adopting DTs in conceptual design of an air-quenching process in sense that (1) the need of simulating an air-quenching process before physical implementation is discussed thoroughly; (2) heat transfer processes are classified, governing mathematical models for various heat transfer behaviors are introduced to present an evaluation model of a heat transfer process; (3) main process variables of air-quenching are identified; (4) a DT of an air-quenching process is developed and simulated to verify the capabilities of commercial SolidWorks Simulation; (5) case studies are developed to show how a CAE tool can be used in DTs. The findings from the reported work are summarized with a debrief of our future work.