This presentation was made at NAFEMS Americas Seminar "Engineering Analysis & Simulation in the Automotive Industry: Creating the Next Generation Vehicle Accurate Modelling for Tomorrow's Technologies".

The automotive engineering community is now confronting the largest technology transformation since its inception. This includes the electrification of powertrains for more efficient consumption and cleaner emissions, the reinvention of the battery with fast wireless charging capabilities and finally the advent of a fully autonomous vehicle. Compounding to these technology changes, the automotive companies design verification process is moving away from a major reliance on physical testing to almost a full virtual simulation product verification process. The challenges to the automotive engineers are enormous and require a significant increase in the upfront use of numerical simulation capabilities, methods and processes such they’re able to efficiently design, manufacture and deliver these very innovative technologies to the market in greater speeds than ever before.

Resource Abstract

It has become increasingly apparent that simulation will be a necessary addition to real-world testing in order to thoroughly validate vehicle features at higher levels of autonomy. Numerous suppliers and research projects have emerged in this space, and Ford has prototyped a simulation workflow that flexibly meets the needs of specific projects through the use of open source gaming engine technology. This work complements existing modeling workflows within Ford, to fill gaps required to train and test next generation algorithms.