China’s largest automaker selects Simcenter portfolio for full-vehicle design analysis

SAIC MAXUS Automotive Co. Ltd. (SAIC MAXUS) produces wide and narrow-body buses, light trucks and special refitted vehicles. The company is dedicated to becoming a global automotive brand, and to meet this goal, SAIC MAXUS is focusing on achieving sustainable employee development, and providing customers with high-quality products and services that provide unprecedented value.

SAIC MAXUS used a “Technology, Trust and Progress” philosophy in its rise to becoming a digital consumer-to-business (C2B) cross-sector automaker. SAIC MAXUS was one of the first companies to embrace C2B for automaking that digitally links the enterprise with customers and partners through internet and cloud computing.

Challenges for full-vehicle development

A full-vehicle development process begins with conceptual design, continues through product design and then engineering design before the final product is produced. The challenge in the process of developing and operating a project is handling the inevitable design changes. These changes need to be made efficiently and cost-effectively. Simulation is a valuable and necessary tool for diagnosing potential problems during system and/or subsystem testing and for addressing those challenges.

Engineering challenges

For each engineering change, the automaker must consider the potential impact on vehicle safety, workability, comfort, economy and reliability. Multidimensional simulation is required and makes the choice of software one of an enterprise’s most important decisions.

When seeking the optimum software for their processes, SAIC MAXUS considered the financial investment as well as the time investment for learning how to operate the software before conducting multidisciplinary simulation.

Choosing Simcenter

After a comprehensive search and benchmarking of competing products, SAIC MAXUS selected the Simcenter™ portfolio from Siemens Digital Industries Software as the best solution to optimize its processes. With the test and simulation platforms Simcenter provides, SAIC MAXUS can establish its comprehensive vehicle performance simulation capabilities. In addition, the token-based, platform-level system maximizes return on investment and significantly improves learning efficiency in different software products. With Simcenter, SAIC MAXUS realized immediate improvements in its development capabilities.

“With the help of Siemens Digital Industries Software’s engineering team, and with the introduction of the Simcenter platform, we were able to quickly build our complete vehicle simulation through its design and analysis capabilities, greatly improving our development efficiency,” says Wang Congchang, chief engineer, SAIC MAXUS.

SAIC MAXUS makes full use of Simcenter’s unique analysis capability based on simulation-test integration by building a full-vehicle noise, vibration and harness (NVH) test simulation hybrid model, which is successfully used in the full-vehicle NVH development process. At the design optimization stage, SAIC MAXUS uses earlier test data and an updated simulation model to quickly evaluate the full-vehicle NVH performance of the new design program. This avoids potential difficulties encountered in the simulation of full-vehicle NVH performance, such as a modeling overload, time-consuming computation and a lack of part detail.

With Simcenter, SAIC MAXUS advanced from a static analysis of vehicle performance to dynamic analysis. With the powerful 1D-3D simulation capabilities offered by Simcenter™ Amesim™ software and Simcenter™ 3D software, the SAIC MAXUS technical team established vehicle dynamic load management systems for several vehicle models. This provided important inputs for the development of subsystems, such as electrical systems, that are dependent on dynamic signals and significantly improved the capability for collaborative development between automakers and spare parts producers. This is especially important for enterprises like SAIC MAXUS that produce commercial vehicles of their own brands.

“With our improved development capability, we are able to respond to the challenge of simultaneously developing multiple vehicle models and developing really competitive, high-quality vehicles,” says Congchang.

SAIC MAXUS engineers demonstrated the benefits of using the Simcenter portfolio when trying to solve a hissing noise issue on the vehicle component level. Turbocharged engines frequently produce an annoying hiss. Vehicle engineering teams must optimize muffler designs to silence these high-frequency noises and at the same time improve cabin interior noise and comfort.

To improve vehicle cabin comfort and interior sound quality, engineers combined their extensive experience using Simcenter™ Testlab™ software solutions with simulations and tests to precisely define the hiss noise frequency bands of the air intake system. Using Simcenter testing solutions, the engineers located the problem area and identified problematic frequency ranges. With the acoustic simulation tool in Simcenter 3D, they then analyzed the air intake system, evaluated the resonant cavity and optimized the muffler design accordingly. This final optimization solved the hiss noise problem in the intake system.