VPD Using an SDM System Demonstrated by Playing with LEGO Cars

Marko Thiele - Scale GmbH

CAE processes are an integral part of virtual product development since they allow to assess the product properties without expansive physical prototypes. Setting up a continuous CAE-process, which involves every aspect, is a complex task. It usually involves managing the requirements for the desired product, working with CAD data to create a virtual prototype, meshing the geometry for preparing the finite element analysis, dealing with a multitude of sparse CAE solver files to create actual simulation runs, submitting jobs to the HPC or cloud for solving and subsequent monitoring of the simulation runs, handling the result files, deriving key-results and finally creating reports for the simulations. For real world car development projects, where hundreds of experts must work and collaborate in such a process, this can be an overwhelming task.

To explain the basic principles how such a workflow could look like, we created an example using simple LEGO® car models. With this we are going to show how requirements and targets as well as milestones are defined upfront and based on these requirements, we will show how a prototype can be created using a CAD system and how CAE-models are derived from the CAD data for different simulation disciplines. For the purpose of this demonstration, we will showcase crash and car to car simulations as well as a CFD example and how to manage these simulations in the SDM system. With respect to the results, we will explain how key-values, curves, pictures and movies can be extracted automatically and used for interactive web reports. Furthermore, we show how to generate a design of experiments directly within the SDM system and how tools for data analysis can be used on all data gathered within the SDM system. Another aspect of this process is the seamless integration of physical test results for analysis and validation purposes. Finally, the key results will be compared to the initially set target values to monitor whether the requirements are already met. With the outcome of the assessment, another development cycle can be started to improve on requirements that are not fulfilled until the final product is ready for delivery.

The goal of this presentation is to give a small excurse into the complexity of virtual product development and how SDM systems can help to manage the challenges by using a simplified example based on LEGO® models.