Digital design

The focus of this paper is to conduct a methodical review regarding the use of digital twins in the powertrain of electric vehicles (EVs). While reviewing the development of digital twin technology, its main application scenarios and its use in electric vehicle powertrains are analysed. Finally, the digital twins currently encounter several challenges that need to be addressed, and so the future development of their application to electric vehicles are summarized.

This report presents a comprehensive overview of the activities carried out in Work Package 4 (WP4), specifically Task 4.3, of the RHODAS project, which focuses on the design and development of a digital twin framework for key components of electric powertrains.  The developed framework comprises three individual digital twins: the inverter digital twin, the e-motor digital twin, and the gearbox digital twin. The inverter digital twin models the electrothermal behavior of power electronics modules (SiC and GaN) to support performance monitoring and failure prediction. The e-motor digital twin captures the thermal behavior of the rotor and stator of the RHODAS e-motor, enabling accurate simulation under various driving conditions. The gearbox digital twin is based on a data-driven thermal equivalent circuit model that estimates the gearbox oil temperature using a range of input data.  All digital twin models are implemented in both MATLAB/Simulink and C++ to enable seamless integration into the RHODAS cloud platform, supporting both online and offline thermal monitoring and efficient computation.  The deliverable also includes extensive sensitivity analyses to investigate the behavior of the e-motor, power inverter, and gearbox under different operating modes. This outcome delivers a robust and scalable digital twin architecture that enhances monitoring, diagnostics, and predictive maintenance capabilities within the RHODAS electric vehicle platform.