The Openmodelica Environment for Building Digital Twins of Sustainable Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

The Modelica modeling language and technology is being warmly received by the world community in modeling and simulation with major applications in virtual prototyping and digital twins of complex cyber-physical systems, which mix physical system dynamics with software (cyber) and networks. It is enabling a revolution in this area, based on its ease of use, visual design of models with combination of lego-like predefined model building blocks, its ability to define model libraries with reusable components, its support for modeling and simulation of complex applications involving parts from several application domains, and many more useful facilities. Adoption is further strengthened by the freely available open source OpenModelica environment for building digital twins and virtual prototypes as well as system analysis and optimization, especially relevant in transforming society into sustainability including applications in renewable energy and fossil-free transportation. This paper gives an overview of this technology as well as some applications.