A Digital Twin Development Framework for an Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP)

Abstract

Premature failure of a sub-system can be critical for an industrial Cyber-Physical System (CPS). A digital twin (DT) assisted predictive maintenance procedure can reduce the risk of costly unplanned maintenance. This study presents a generalized DT development framework for an Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) that can assist in predictive maintenance. The framework is applied on a single-phase ESP as a proof of concept. The maximum winding temperature of the selected ESP is simulated using a multiphysics simulation tool with transient electromagnetic and transient heat transfer solvers. The simulation parameters were refined using data captured through an ESP free-run experiment. Simulating the total energy loss in the ESP stator and rotor and the transfer of heat from the outer fluid domain facilitates a relationship between the measurable external temperature and the maximum temperature in the stator winding. Following a design of experiments (DOE) approach, a series of simulations were run to establish a statistical model for the winding temperature in terms of the fluid temperature, the time duration a particular temperature was persistent, and the initial maximum stator winding temperature. As the instantaneous maximum stator winding temperature is related to the remaining useful lifetime, it was shown using a case study that the proposed framework can prognosticate the ESP failure, assisting effective decision-making for predictive maintenance of a CPS.

Received: 5 November 2023 | Revised: 5 February 2024 | Accepted: 8 March 2024

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

The information/date required for reproducing the results is already presented in the manuscript.

Author Contribution Statement

Mihiran Galagedarage Don: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Project administration; Sampath Liyanarachchi: Investigation, Writing - review & editing; Thumeera R. Wanasinghe: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration.