Plymouth, Michigan – Siemens Simcenter software contains design-centric thermal simulation tools for autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs) – the industry's first comprehensive, easy-to-use solution engineered to address critical, thermal-driven challenges associated with AEV design, such as extending electric drive range, optimizing in-cabin comfort, designing sensors, and ensuring the reliability of all autonomous drive (AD) systems.
AD functionality must execute safely, including sensor fusion boxes and a broad array of sensors. Thermal and power loads of the vehicle's high-performance AD systems can reduce electric drive range as much as 35%. Similarly, in-cabin passenger comfort requirements and machine driving behavior can significantly impact the vehicle's electric powertrain energy efficiency and drive range.
Efficient, co-dependent thermal design of AD electronics -- from integrated circuits (ICs) and vehicle integration, to electric powertrain and cabin design – is necessary to successfully develop AEVs. The thermal simulation solution, delivered as part of the Simcenter portfolio, is the industry's first solution specifically designed to help design engineers overcome these challenges. It unleashes the power of information-rich computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology for mainstream automotive engineers, generating highly accurate thermal digital twin simulations of the powertrain, processors, sensors and other key enabling technologies powering next-generation AEV designs.
Other new capabilities include co-simulation of component thermal and electric powertrain performance, connectivity between simulation of electric motor performance and system simulation for electrical and thermal management, and design space exploration using thermal digital twin models. This Simcenter solution also features seamless connectivity to electronic design automation tools and CAD design platforms, helping engineers to easily account for design co-dependencies across electronic, electrical and mechanical domains from the earliest stages of development.
The Siemens solution for design-centric thermal simulation consists of Simcenter FLOEFD software for electronics and electric powertrain thermal simulation within native CAD environment, Simcenter Motorsolve software for electric motor design, and unparalleled component design to 1D system thermal design co-simulation with 1D CFD Simcenter Flomaster software. General availability is planned for October 2018.