The modern view of vehicle design and development is that much of the work can be carried out in the modelling world. This may be the Nirvana of the far future, but in reality computer modelling of all aspects of design and especially development are far behind that required to pass a design from Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) model into production.
This paper discusses how the use of the most up to date CAE modelling methods, balanced with a good understanding of modern physical testing methods, can provide an optimised route through the design and development process. An integrated approach to the durability development process is described from obtaining load case information using virtual proving ground techniques through to the creation and use of virtual test rigs and the utilisation of fatigue analysis methods to predict component lives.
The process is demonstrated with an example case study of suspension durability prediction on a low volume sports car. The case study used the most modern levels of computer based modelling, covering virtual proving ground, virtual test rig, dynamic analysis, finite element fatigue prediction and damper and bush non-linear modelling. The case study demonstrates that although simulation tools have been developed to a good level of accuracy, they still require a great deal of physical information to make the results valid.