Reduced Development Time for a Vehicle Aero Package Through Integration of FEA and Laboratory Testing

The need to deliver new vehicle designs to the marketplace in shorter time periods is mandating a change to the “do it right the first time” design philosophy. Multiple stages of prototyping must be reduced to one or two stages in order to reduce cycle development time to meet market demands.

This paper discusses an effort to reduce the development time for an aero package through the integration of finite element analysis (FEA) and laboratory testing. FEA provides design guidelines prior to prototype testing and a mathematical prototype on which changes can be quickly evaluated during testing. Laboratory testing, using an electrohydraulic system with Remote Parameter Control (RPC), provides accurate accelerated durability testing of the design.