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Enhancing Sustainability in Machinery with Digital Twins and System Simulation

Presentation Abstract for the 2024 ESI SimulationX User Forum

Mr. Sven Bätzing - Product Area New Business Virtual Engineering, Rexroth BRSL Co-Authors: Dr.-Ing. Nils Menager, Mr. Rüdiger Kampfmann


"Sustainability has been gaining in importance in all areas of society for several years. Therefore, OEMs, machine operators, government and society expect extensive activities from machinery suppliers. Bosch Rexroth has taken this challenge and pursues a holistic approach from cradle to grave. This means that the whole life cycle of a product is considered, i.e., from raw material mining up to recycling.


In the industrial sector, the operating phase of a machine is of particular importance, as it has a massive impact on the CO2 emissions, whereas in the sector of consumer goods, it is often the manufacturing phase that is more significant. Hence, the power consumption of machines used in industrial production should be already considered and minimized during development. This applies especially to hydraulic machines such as presses and injection molding machines, which often have a high energy consumption.


However, a component-based approach alone is not meaningful. Instead, the interaction of the entire machinery must be considered, and the energy consumption is strongly dependent on the used cycle. Without the usage of digital twins and Virtual Engineering methods, the energy consumption can hardly be calculated before commissioning, especially since norm cycles are not always defined. Simulation usage makes it also easy to compare different machine concepts, including analyses regarding energy efficiency and power consumption, and thus to find an optimal setup.


Bosch Rexroth has recognized this demand and provides digital twins in form of the Modelica library Rexroth BRSL. The BRSL is a 1D system simulation library with a focus on hydraulic and electric drive technology. It provides everything from a single source that is needed to create a representation of the static, dynamic and kinematic properties of an entire machine or system in the form of a digital twin. Finally, this digital twin can be used both for well-known and established use cases like the validation of the dynamic system behavior already in early phases of the development cycle, but also for future-relevant topics like the energy analyses mentioned above.


The library contains a huge variety of generic components, but also fully parameterized and validated models of Bosch Rexroth components. The generic models have to be parameterized manually, e.g. on the basis of data sheets, and can therefore be used in a versatile and flexible manner. This allows usage of these models to represent the behavior of products from many different manufacturers. The also available pre-parameterized models, however, require no further parameterization. All parameters including the required efficiency tables for energy analyses are already stored inside the component model, so that the models are ready-to-use as soon as they are placed on the modeling area. On the one hand, this avoids possible errors during parameterization, on the other hand, the time required for modeling can be significantly reduced.


Every Rexroth component has a unique type key that specifies it. A Rexroth component model can be easily integrated into the Modelica model by selecting its type key from a dropdown menu inside the parameter dialog of the Rexroth base component model. This allows a well-organized representation of the huge amount of available type keys and makes it easy for the user to insert special Rexroth components into his system model.


In this contribution it is shown how Virtual Engineering based on BRSL can contribute to a future-proof engineering. First, an overview of the BRSL and its content is given and the possibilities of how BRSL models can be used together with components from other libraries within SimulationX are presented. Afterwards, the use of the library specifically for sustainability use cases is presented using an industry-relevant example."


If interested in additional information, please sign up for the 2024 SimulationX User Forum or contact us!

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