F2008-12-062
The Possibilities of Virtual Development Making Use of the Process Chain CAE, CAD, CAT Illustrated by the Example of Development of a Derivative
Increasing demands made on vehicle properties driven by legislation and consumer tests in the area of passive safety, requirements in terms of noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) which have similarly become more stringent, the increasing number of customised vehicle models and fiercer competition demand an integrated and synchronised deployment of CA technologies (virtual development) in the development process, and especially a CAE-based and -driven design process during feature development.
The CAE-based and -driven design process enables specified functional properties of the vehicle to be tested and approved early on, taking into account costs, weight and package. Functional concepts can be drafted and evaluated in the early development phase. Conflicts in functional objectives will be detected in the course of multi-disciplinary function design, and possible solutions will be found.
This feature-oriented design process has in the meantime become well established in Audi vehicle development. A good example of this is the development of a vehicle derivative during body design.
A properly configured CAD-CAE interface which already takes into account the demands of CAE deployment can speed up CAE model construction considerably (creation of the finite element mesh, joining technology), enabling a rapid evaluation.
The reduction in weight can often be realised using a systematic deployment of the calculation without any loss of function. The combined CAE-CAT deployment can keep function tests and trials to a minimum early on. A component trial created using CAE is used to secure crash properties with respect to structural integrity. In order to minimise the development risk, it will assume even greater importance thanks to the discussion about whether to develop without prototypes when developing internal derivatives.
Potentials for increasing efficiency are provided by the optimisation and synchronisation of processes (CAD geometry creation, development of characteristics, tests & trials and production preparation). Virtual development also involves the following areas of activity: methodical further development in the crash simulation area and NVH for controlling prognosis accuracy. It is necessary and also offers further potential for minimising development risk.
Universal use and documentation/archiving of vehicle data offer synergies for CAD, CDE and CAT applications as well as the requisite Quality Assurance.
Session: Vehicle Development