A Foundation Model for Building Digital Twins: A Case Study of a Chiller

Abstract

Due to the high-fidelity mapping of the physical buildings and the intelligent performance shown in their lifecycle, digital twins (DTs) have gained increasing attention in the building sector. Although digital twins based on building information modeling (BIM) have become a hot research topic, existing works emphasize the digitization of building static and dynamic information and lack a unified consideration of the inherent physical mechanisms and interactive behaviors of buildings. To this end, this paper proposes a foundation model for building digital twins which realizes the unification of building static information, physical mechanisms and interaction patterns. The conceptual framework of the model is given first and then formal modeling and verification with time automata theory are performed to demonstrate the plausibility of the model. Finally, a practical digital twin of a chiller is developed based on the proposed foundation model as an example, thus, indicating its effectiveness and credibility.

Keywords

• digital twins
• foundation model
• physical mechanisms
• interaction patterns