Development of a real-time test bed for indoor climate simulation in a VR environment using a digital twin

Abstract

This paper describes the development process of a test bed for an interactive VR (virtual reality) environment for indoor climate simulation of buildings. The basic idea is to reproduce the simulated indoor climate of a thermal room model in a climate chamber with the help of air conditioning devices and thus to make the indoor climate directly physically experienceable for a user in real time. In a first step, the real test bed is mapped with the help of a digital twin and simulated in parallel with the room model. In a second step, the digital twin is replaced by the real test bed and the Modelica room model is included then as an embedded model. In this way, the real test bed can be operated with the control algorithm which has been evaluated and optimized in a previous step. The described approach is demonstrated in a case study using a simple single zone building model.