Virtual Product Development Process Research Articles

Applying a System of Systems Perspective to Hyundai‐Kia's Virtual Tire Development

ABSTRACTSystems engineering has become important in almost every complex product manufacturing industry, especially automotive. Emerging trends like vehicle electrification and autonomous driving now pose a system of systems (SoS) engineering challenge to automotive OEMs. This paper presents a proof‐of‐concept (PoC) that applies a top‐down SoS perspective to Hyundai‐Kia Motor Corporation's (HKMC) virtual product development process to develop a performance‐critical component of the vehicle, the tire. The PoC demonstrates using the Arcadia MBSE method to develop a consistent, layered, vehicle architecture model starting from the SoS operational context down to the lowest level of system decomposition in the physical architecture thereby capturing top‐down knowledge traceability Using the concept of functional chains, several vehicle performance views are captured that serve as the basis for architecture verification orchestration across engineering domains using a cross‐domain orchestration platform thereby validating key vehicle/tire performance metrics that influence the tire design parameters. Preliminary results of the study show that applying a method‐based modeling approach could provide several benefits to HKMC's current product development approach such as reduced time to model, SoS knowledge capture and reusability, parameter/requirement traceability, early performance verification, and effective systems engineering collaboration between the OEM, tire design supplier, and tire manufacturers.

Applying a System of Systems Perspective to Hyundai‐Kia's Virtual Tire Development

AbstractSystems engineering has become important in almost every complex product manufacturing industry, especially automotive. Emerging trends like vehicle electrification and autonomous driving now pose a System of Systems (SoS) engineering challenge to automotive OEMs. This paper presents a proof‐of‐concept (PoC) that applies a top‐down SoS perspective to Hyundai‐Kia Motor Corporation's (HKMC) virtual product development process to develop a performance‐critical component of the vehicle, the tire. The PoC demonstrates using the Arcadia MBSE method to develop a consistent, layered, vehicle architecture model starting from the SoS operational context down to the lowest level of system decomposition in the physical architecture thereby capturing top‐down knowledge traceability. Using the concept of functional chains, several vehicle performance views are captured that serve as the basis for architecture verification orchestration across engineering domains using a cross‐domain orchestration platform thereby validating key vehicle/tire performance metrics that influence the tire design parameters. Preliminary results of the study show that applying a method‐based modeling approach could provide several benefits to HKMC's current product development approach such as reduced time to model, SoS knowledge capture and reusability, parameter/requirement traceability, early performance verification, and effective systems engineering collaboration between the OEM, tire design supplier and tire manufacturers.

Virtual product development process for reducing noise, vibration, and harshness of vehicle based on substructuring and artificial neural network

In this study, virtual product development method for reducing vibration and noise is proposed for designing at the concept development stage of a vehicle. To this end, the vibration characteristics of the system are predicted through the Lagrange-multiplier frequency-based substructuring technique. The concepts of contact, blocked and transmitted force, and force transmissibility were used for determining the improvement subsystem or combination of subsystems when using the modular platform. Moreover, after the subsystems to be improved were determined, Artificial Neural Network was used as a method of predicting vibration characteristics according to the change of design variables. To verify this, the prediction of the blocked force was performed by changing the young’s modulus of the simplified substructure. Finally, the reduction in response was confirmed by applying the blocked force of the simplified subframe to the simplified structure, and a vehicle development process using a database at the concept setting stage is proposed.

Development and Performance Verification of a Motorized Prosthetic Leg for Stair Walking.

The present study emphasized on the optimal design of a motorized prosthetic leg and evaluation of its performance for stair walking. Developed prosthetic leg includes two degrees of freedom on the knee and ankle joint designed using a virtual product development process for better stair walking. The DC motor system was introduced to imitate gait motion in the knee joint, and a spring system was applied at the ankle joint to create torque and flexion angle. To design better motorized prosthetic leg, unnecessary mass was eliminated via a topology optimization process under a complex walking condition in a boundary considered condition and aluminum alloy for lower limb and plastic nylon through 3D printing foot which were used. The structural safety of a developed prosthetic leg was validated via finite element analysis under a variety of walking conditions. In conclusion, the motorized prosthetic leg was optimally designed while maintaining structural safety under boundary conditions based on the human walking data, and its knee motions were synchronized with normal human gait via a PD controller. The results from this study about powered transfemoral prosthesis might help amputees in their rehabilitation process. Furthermore, this research can be applied to the area of biped robots that try to mimic human motion.

ModelTracer: User-friendly Traceability for the Development of Mechatronic Products

The development of complex mechatronic systems demands an integration of models throughout the virtual product development process. Systems engineering is an approach for enabling the development of successful interdisciplinary products. Traceability, one of the most important aspects of systems engineering, is a method for explicit documentation of logical relationships between development artifacts. In this paper we present a prototype traceability tool, ModelTracer, which aims to reduce the cognitive effort for the creation and maintenance of traceability models in systems engineering.

Fatigue Life Prediction of Short FiberReinforced Composite

Toincrease stiffness and strength of injection moulded components short glass fibres were added as filler material. The application of short fibre reinforced plastic materials has become more important over the last years, because they can be designed as per specific requirements. Short fibre-reinforced plastics provide the combination of lower weight with adequate strength. The recent trend in industry is to have the lighter product; somany structural parts are manufactured with short fibre-reinforced polymers instead of traditional metal. The design of the final product has to pass assessment of durability or reliability aspects in addition to structural strength aspects. Prediction of fatigue life for fiber reinforced composite identifies critical areas for the product development in early stage, which saves the cost of re-test and redesign. This paper is concerned with animplementation of virtual durability product development process to predict fatigue life of short fibre-reinforced materials. The multi-disciplinary process consists of aninjection moulding simulation, followed by a structural stress analysis and a fatigue calculation. This analysis method and simulation process which takes into account the fibre orientation and distribution as result from moulding simulation have been verified with component test.

VR tools for the development of energy-efficient products

This paper describes Virtual Reality (VR) tools for the development of energy-efficient products in mechanical engineering. Visualizing the energy flows of a machine tool offers a better understanding of their efficiency for the designer and the engineer during the virtual product development process. The first part of this paper presents the transformation of 2D Sankey diagrams into 3D and their advantages over other 3D visualizations. The main focus here lies in the visualization of discrete energy values. The second part introduces an adaptive Finite Element algorithm for faster calculation that allows the interactive handling of energy-efficient problems in virtual environments. The basic approach proposes the combination of this algorithm with the usage in a virtual environment through the implementation of a programming interface.

Integration of topology optimisation tools and knowledge management into the virtual Product Development Process of automotive components

This paper presents a methodology in which CAD, a multi-body simulator and a Topological Optimisation (TO) tool are synergically employed to support the design of a suspension component. In particular, the methodology defines some guidelines and introduces two knowledge-based interfaces able to facilitate the integration of TO of the component within a standard design process. To illustrate this capability, the process is applied to the conceptual design of the Upright for a Formula SAE prototype. The results show that the integrated design approach can efficiently support the selection of the optimum conceptual design of a mechanical component with complex dynamic behaviour, in particular when very little previous experience on the system is available.

Research on Virtual Prototyping Development of Product Information Modeling Method

In the heterogeneous environment, fast and real-time information exchange is the requirements of rapid developing and information integrated for mechanical products. Meanwhile, it is also the basis and guarantee of virtual prototyping. This paper analyzes the process of mechanical product design, particularly starts from the concept design stage of virtual product to achieve information sharing and building information models, put forward a software network environment based on objects and STEP standards for integrated information model and the basic PVPIIM framework, application protocol's development, leaf characteristics of the definition and expressions. Furthermore, we proposed a distributed virtual environment in the virtual prototyping development and make it support the whole pump virtual product development process on basis of PVPIIM for an integrated virtual environment, where we use virtual reality modeling language VRML to describe the 3D geometric shape, material, texture, color and virtual design background of pump parts.

Practical application of digital simulation with physical test in vehicle virtual

In the current vehicle design and development program, the Virtual Product Development process (hereafter, VPD process) is the innovation for automotive industry, which improves product quality and shortens time to market. In general, valid CAE applications are the key component of the VPD process as well as physical tests being indispensable to create valid simulation technologies. This presentation explains how physical-test-based CAE leverages the VPD process. In particular, the presentation is based on how physical testing supports the VPD process and why the ESTECH philosophy is that ‘‘The essence of CAE lies in its synergy with Testing;’’ a philosophy that differentiates the company from the competition. To demonstrate these activities, case studies based on automotive dynamic and real time simulation will be presented. In the case studies, vehicle body NVH and brake noise analysis will be used to show the interaction between physical test and computer simulation. Finally, practical application of the VPD process in one of the leading Japanese automotive companies will be shown, where the effectiveness of the front loading in the actual vehicle development program and the actual deployment of VPD process to the Functional Digital Vehicle project in the powertrain design are to be presented.