Facilitating Virtual Testing at an Industrial Level by Simulation Data Management

Automotive OEMs can derive significant cost savings by reducing the quantity of physical crash tests and thereby accelerate product development, when they follow the Euro NCAP Virtual Testing guidelines. It helps in optimizing the overall vehicle development process via more efficient simulations, as well as facilitates in early adoption of new safety regulations. In this pursuit, companies must comply with strict Euro NCAP requirements, which includes transparency and traceability of virtual tests. A major challenge therein is model validation – which requires highly precise detailing and extensive use of data for accurately replicating real physics of the problem. Deploying these workflows into an existing simulation process can be a complicated and time-consuming task, particularly when integrating various simulation and testing methods. A powerful simulation and process data management system (SPDM) can thereby assist companies to automate their entire simulation process, ensures transparency for all stakeholders and optimizes the collaboration experience. In this paper, authors demonstrate how companies can use a SPDM system to integrate Virtual Testing into their simulation workflows, ensuring end-to-end automation, comprehensive documentation, and maximum transparency. Various aspects of Virtual Testing can be efficiently managed within SPDM system - definition and tracking of project requirements, efficient management of model data, automatic simulation setup, transparent analysis of results and generation of interactive web reports consisting of Virtual Testing specific checks, which drastically reduces engineer’s manual effort, followed by a secured and efficient transfer of data to Euro NCAP web portal. Protecting both input and output data against any manipulation is a key concern in an industrial level Virtual Testing process, which is addressed via automatic hash generation for the simulation data. The process of making data tamper proof can be organized, managed and tracked within a SPDM system, which increases protection of intellectual property and ensures confidence in simulation results.