Digital twins

What is a Digital Twin?

A digital twin (DT) is a virtual representation of a real-world entity, such as a device, process, or system. It is a dynamic model that mirrors the physical counterpart, continuously exchanging data and simulating its behavior. The digital twin allows monitoring, analysis, and even prediction of the physical entity's performance.

What Research is NIST Doing in this Area?

NIST conducts ongoing research and standards development efforts for digital twins (DTs) in manufacturing. This work focuses on systems integration for DTs, including hardware and sensor integration. Researchers are developing material DTs for metal alloys that are used in additive manufacturing. NIST's previous efforts in developing data and tool infrastructures for the Materials Genome Initiative are being used to accelerate the development of the DTs, including the integration of physics-informed AI/ML models.

NIST cybersecurity and information systems are investigating DTs. NIST's work on industrial control systems security is widely adopted in industry. This work is being extended to include standards and security guidelines for DTs.

NIST researchers also are investigating using DTs for calibrations. For example, they have developed a concept model of a new type of physical NIST traceable calibrated standard-gain antenna specifically designed so that its physical properties can be accurately digitized and represented as a DT in electromagnetic simulation software. This work would create new standard reference data sets in the form of the parameters needed to represent and create DTs in software simulation environments. These data sets will allow stakeholders to have a NIST-calibrated DT that is based on a calibrated physical device (such as an antenna) within their simulation environments.