Model portability, model fidelity and Real-Time capability are becoming critical requirements in the new era of virtual engineering. These characteristics provide the foundation to ensure continuity, reliability, and scalability both for physical and control model representations, along all the product development phases.
The adoption of the digital twin model design is key to enhancing the pre-concept phase, to anticipating possible issues, to being competitive in the time-to-market especially for high performance BEV vehicles.
Novel simulation methodologies have been developed in a joint effort between Maserati and Gamma Technologies with the aim of reducing computation time and of preserving model fidelity. Specifically, real-time modelling capability has been accomplished by paying particular attention to the modeling technique for the thermal management system, which consists of detailed models for battery pack, E-motors (including gearbox) and interlaced cooling circuits managing three different types of fluids, like air, coolant and lubricating oil).
High model fidelity is a strong requirement for the proper design of such a flexible and complex thermal management system, in order to validate it against multiple use cases characterized by extreme conditions of both temperature and power required (i.e. track operations).
The methodology developed aimed to maintain the fidelity of the system model at a satisfactory level, while guaranteeing solutions in real time and allowing its use also for the purposes of virtual calibration, through a specific list of I/Os connected by means of a dedicated Virtual-CAN bus.
This collaborative virtual environment and the creation of a shared tool chain between the virtual engineering and control departments have been the key to accelerating the development and validation phase of both the cooling system and the control design.
The digital twin final verification and calibration has been performed on the Dynamic Driving Simulator in a virtual track scenario: the model's portability and its real-time capability make it possible to consider feedback from professional drivers as part of the development process.