This presentation was made at the NAFEMS Americas Conference "Simulation in the Automotive Industry: Creating the Next Generation Vehicle" held on the 16-18 March 2021.

The automotive engineering community is now confronting the largest technology transformation since its inception. The demand to manufacture cleaner, safer, and smarter vehicles, along with providing an overall enhanced driving and ride experience, has never been higher. As a result, engineering teams must discover, evaluate, and successfully implement leading-edge technology and methods to produce reliable, effective results.

Hence, the challenges for automotive engineers are enormous and require a significant increase in the upfront use of numerical simulation capabilities, methods, and processes such that they’re able to efficiently design, manufacture and deliver these innovative technologies to market in greater speeds than ever before.

Resource Abstract

Today, there are increasing number of vehicles equipped with automatic driving systems (ADS) enter onto roadways. While the intended benefits of ADS are very clear, such as alleviating driving fatigue, reducing vehicle collisions, avoiding run off the road accidents and improve overall traffic system, the actual reduction of traffic accident statistics are still too early to provide a clear picture of the effectiveness of the current ADS technology. The challenges that automotive industries and transportation safety community face are enormous for the next 20 years as mix vehicle fleets, regular human-driven vehicles, and ADS operated vehicles, as well as no-occupant ADS vehicles coexist on our highway systems.



ADS is a disruptive technology that will bring changes in the established engineering practice of vehicle design, including but not limited to vehicle structural design, occupant safety protections system design, and highway safety system design. This talk will address some of these challenges facing automotive industries so that engineers are fully aware of safety consequences of changing technology. Topics of how to implement vehicle structural design strategies when primary safety protection modes are undefined, and how to develop vehicle occupant protection systems when seating arrangements in ADS equipped vehicles are no longer have to be forward-facing, and the importance of using system level of integrated simulation for virtual testing, will be discussed in this talk.