VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE SOLUTION
VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE
SOLUTION
Crash and Safety Simulation Software
Experience the Power of the Software that Revolutionized Crash Safety and Pushed the Boundaries of Innovation
There might be nothing more important about your design than the way it performs – from safety, lightweight features, durability, drivability, noise, and vibration. Yet, how many times have you found yourself with a less than ideal outcome because you were too far into the development cycle by the time you realized a change needed to be made? Or maybe you struggle to predict the impact that new lightweight material will have on your product's performance. Let's not forget the endless amount of time and money spent on multiple design iterations, re-tooling, and physical prototypes, which can hinder you from creating the innovative designs you know you and your team are capable of.
ESI's flagship product, ESI Virtual Performance Solution (VPS), gives you the power to unleash your innovation and improve your process efficiency – all with one single tool.
Zero Real Tests, Zero Real Prototypes – Innovate with Confidence
Thanks to ESI’s expertise and VPS tool, we succeeded in developing one of our new vehicles using a single real prototype – we got it right the first time. This allowed us to earn the whole five stars on the Euro NCAP safety test.
Olivier Colmard
Integrated CAE & PLM
Engineering Vice President
Groupe Renault
Read more on how ESI supported its strategic partner Renault Group in the realization of the new Clio 5 concept.
Electric powertrains and autonomous driving have impacted the components and architectural structures of new vehicles. Because of these revolutionary modes of transportation, OEMs are required to ensure that vehicles maintain the same levels of crash safety, performance (range, lightweight, comfort) and cost-efficiency. Furthermore, they can no longer afford to spend the time and resources needed to crash, measure, and evaluate real cars, only to go back to the drawing board and build “improved” prototypes. OEMs and their suppliers must find a way to keep up with evolving requirements – that ability lies in simulation. OEMs can virtually test an unending number of scenarios, which is key to ensuring the successful development of an electric vehicle with a global mindset.
With ESI VPS, virtually evaluate complex new tests for new vehicles:
- Engineer vehicle structure and batteries, with respect to regulations and precertification
- Protect passengers in autonomous vehicles with an advanced airbag system
- Guarantee pedestrian safety with respect to electric vehicles
- Test the drivability in multiple scenarios, including waterflow management and water crossing
- Increase durability and reduce interior noise thanks to a smart, lightweight car design that absorbs vibration and noise
- Design and certify lightweight cars, including battery packs (battery versus structure weight)
Zero Silos, Reduce Costs, Shorter Timeframes
HONDA R&D has been using ESI’s Virtual Performance Solution for over 20 years. Today, we are leveraging the capacities of Virtual Performance Solution’s Single Core Model on a full car for our latest vehicle platform development…. not only for crash and safety domains but also for NVH and durability
Eisei Higuchii
Chief Engineer
HONDA R&D Co. Ltd
Leading engineering teams are adopting an increasingly digital mindset to deploy innovative concepts at an unprecedented pace while meeting or exceeding performance requirements. To do that, they need the right tools.
VPS's unique Single Core Model allows you to eliminate silos between disciplines by opening the door to lightning-fast iterations and unmatched efficiency while developing innovative solutions. By drastically reducing the time spent on construction and modification of your model, engineers can investigate design options and variations, allowing them to make the best trade-offs and reduce the time spent on the synchronization of models between domains. VPS customers, from startups to top OEMs, conduct multi-domain engineering using this single core model. They're breaking down the silos separating engineering departments and working concurrently towards their goals, delivering innovative products at a manageable cost and risk.
The extended scalability and robustness offered for high-performance computing are key to investigating multiple design options, virtually testing the car's performance, around a single core model, and performing iterations before design freeze. In addition to multi-scale modeling, this offers improved accuracy along with the benefits of cost and time savings.
ESI's teams of experts are supporting engineering organizations throughout the world to implement virtual prototypes, integrate them across their ecosystem, establish their value & ROI, and ensure they are fully equipped for sustainable deployment.
Benefits of Virtual Performance Solution
- Shift towards zero real tests, significantly reducing or eliminating costly real tests altogether
- Virtually assess complex new tests for new vehicles [water crossing, airbags, regulatory crash tests (including battery), vibro-acoustics tests], all while using a combination of lightweight materials
- Ensure high predictivity with access to multi-scale modeling using detailed modeling where needed, and the chaining of manufacturing effects
- The Single Core Model makes it possible to investigate designs options and variations and make the best trade-offs, reducing time spent on the synchronization of models between domains
- High-performance computing and multi-scale modeling delivers accuracy, only where needed, for a shorter calculation time
- Expert modeling support helps you explore new virtual test and integrate them into your engineering process workflow
Engineering an Electrified Vehicle
Car electrification is posing a unique challenge for OEMs as they strive to optimize range, aiming for mass consumer adoption. From designing the lightest vehicle possible, while accounting for batteries, to optimizing the car’s energy management strategy, there are a variety of different approaches in developing the highest performing EVs.
With rigid time frames, virtual prototypes are vital in helping engineers hit their targets while ensuring an excellent cost to mass ratio.
ESI’s Virtual Performance Solution supports:
- Design and pre-certification of lightweight cars, ensuring performances of innovative joining technology for an efficient mix of material
- Virtual testing of the complete car, with a structure protecting the battery pack and ensuring crash and vibratory tests, while maintaining modified mass distribution.
- Battery design testing, including all mechanical behaviors of the battery
- Virtual testing of fluid-structure interaction to assess the car’s behavior during water crossing, simulating the impact of the water on the car underbody and ensuring that no water enters a critical compartment
- NVH challenges related to new noise sources, such as frequency and propagation paths, have the potential to hinder the development of EVs significantly
In just eight months, we went from limited Virtual Prototyping capability to winning those bids. The head of the whole program conducting the bidding process went out of his way to tell us that the mechanical simulation was an instrumental part in helping us get the design approved. We could not have done that without ESI.
Farasis
Designing a Lightweight Vehicle
Optimizing performance for lightweight designs impacts all components and architectures of modern vehicles. Virtual Prototyping helps you evaluate different material options or joining techniques created early in the design phase. With virtual testing, you can spot design issues from the start, ensuring your vehicle will meet the expected safety, performance, and cost-efficient, lightweight requirements – all while shortening your design cycle.
Elevate your lightweight designs with Virtual Performance Solution
- ESI VPS is known for its end-to-end Virtual Prototyping of structures, as it accounts for the manufacturing and assembly process for performance prediction. Having a detailed knowledge of the impact of the manufacturing process on structural performance is imperative.
- New features like advanced composite crash and strength models allow you to predict the rupture behavior of composite parts and their capability to absorb energy during a crash.
- By coupling metal structures with composite materials, you open yourself up to more flexibility when it comes to design while remaining cost-efficient and compatible with mass production.
- Using a multi-scale approach, engineers can virtually test performances of new technologies to join composite and metallic parts, ensuring optimal crash and fatigue performance. This is important as it influences the crash scenario.
- Since lightweight impacts NVH performance, using a single core model for all performances is key in making the right design trade-offs. Because reducing weight often means reduced structural performance, it directly impacts crash, safety & noise, and vibration & harshness (NVH) performance. The absence of precise and reliable simulations often causes engineers to adopt conservative safety margins, directly impacting weight, and therefore, global program performance.
Designing the Safest Vehicle
With the automotive industry committed to making “Vision Zero”, a world without traffic fatalities, a reality, there will be no compromise on safety. New electrified vehicles need to deliver on safety, and the list of regulation requirements are growing fast. With electric powertrains and autonomous driving, OEMs are challenged to ensure that these vehicles maintain the same levels of safety, performance and cost-efficiency as the vehicles that came before them.
Use Virtual Performance Solution to maintain vehicle safety requirements
- EV safety is determined by how well the car’s structural design integrates the embedded battery. Pre-certifying the complete vehicle designs in all the regulatory scenarios and evaluating the risk of structural damages to the battery pack is critical.
- Deliver the safest and most performant car for passengers and pedestrians, including developing advanced airbags. Engineering structure and batteries respect regulatory tests and pre-certifying them.
- How to ensure drivability in realistic situations, especially how to manage safety when combining an EV and water, which can be detrimental.