This presentation was made at the NAFEMS Eastern European Seminar "Engineering Analysis & Simulation in the Automotive Industry" held on the 7th of November in Bucharest.

Automotive manufacturers and suppliers are constantly challenged with delivering innovative, safe, and dependable vehicles to market as efficiently as possible. As a result, engineering teams must discover, evaluate, and successfully implement leading-edge technology and methods to produce a reliable, effective outcome. Many of these efforts now come together under concepts such as Industry 4.0, Digital Twin, CAE Democratization, and Cloud Solutions. But what do these really mean for you, as a simulation specialist?

Resource Abstract

This paper illustrates the challenges and solutions in the domain of connected vehicle simulation, based on a typical high-interest automotive application: the development and performance optimization for automotive 5G and ADAS / AV antenna or sensor arrays.



The workflow starts with the virtual antenna prototyping, using 3D electromagnetic simulation. Depending on required KPIs, often a single antenna may not be enough, but rather an antenna array may need to be designed. The antenna array then needs to be placed in the car, sometimes even hidden behind a bumper or covered by a design element. Simulation is used to ensure that the antenna array will still work properly when integrated into the car and that the performance is optimized according to safety standards. In real driving conditions, sensors and antennas might be covered by dirt, rain, snow or ice, which will affect their performance and reliability. Advanced CFD simulations can help determine the degree of soiling and what counter-measures can be taken, still without the need of fabricating a real prototype. Finally, co-simulation and co-optimization are used as the last workflow step for determining the optimal position of the antenna in or on the car, such that all functional, safety-related and even aesthetic design KPIs are achieved.