A review of digital twins in smart industries: Concepts, milestones, trends, applications, opportunities and challenges
综述了数字孪生在智能产业中的发展与应用，梳理了30本主要期刊的贡献，重点分析了2018年以来《Computers in Industry》期刊中制造、建筑、交通等领域的相关文献，并讨论了理论机遇与实践挑战。
A digital twin (DT) is a real-time, highly accurate, virtual replica that reflects the states and behaviours of physical objects or systems. DTs can enable monitoring, simulation, prediction, optimisation as well as the structured integration of technologies, data flows and functional processes within smart industries. In recent years, the DT technology has emerged as a research hotspot, which has prompted us to conduct a review of its development and application in various industries. We have identified 30 leading journals that have significantly contributed to DT research, with the Computers in Industry (CII) journal ranking second among these 30 journals with more than 80 related publications. After briefly discussing the key concepts and major milestones around the development and rapid adoption of DTs in smart industries, we focus on reviewing and analysing the DT publications from the CII journal from 2018 to present by systematically categorising them into four primary application domains: manufacturing, construction, transportation, and technologies and paradigms. We also discuss potential research opportunities (e.g., life cycle management, cross-disciplinary integration, human-machine collaboration) and challenges from a theoretical perspective, and provide managerial insights (e.g., building open standards, enhancing data access compatibility, extending DTs’ operational functions, applications to more industries) from a practical perspective. This review will be helpful for academic researchers and industrial practitioners to gain a broad understanding of the versatility of DTs, thereby fostering interdisciplinary innovation.