Digital Twin of 3d Motion Compensated Gangway Use of Unity Game Engine and TwinCAT PLC Control for Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation

2021

Master's thesis in Mechatronics (MAS500) This thesis presents the development, implementation, and testing of a digital twin representing a 3D compensated gangway located on a service operation vessel for wind farms The real-time simulator runs on a separate thread in the Unity game engine and interfaces with a PC-based control system, including the control algorithms. The simulations in Unity achieve a step time of 5 μs, and the communication to the control system has a latency of 10ms.The PLC program in TwinCAT, running real-time on a separate computer, controls the hydraulic actuated gangway simulator with acceptable accuracy in 3m waves. Active damping employing pressure feedback to int…