ABSTRACT
The automotive industry is continuously demanding shorter development cycles in order to maintain competitiveness. For this reason, car manufacturers have always been adopting state-of-the-art strategies to shorten the time to market such as simultaneous engineering, rapid product development, and front loading of the development process. These are examples where simulation techniques are key enablers. The use of simulation in the development process leads to an early increase of knowledge. Consequently, subsequent processes can start sooner, which amounts to time and cost savings. Nowadays, simulation is used throughout all phases of product development, in the conceptual design and requirements phase, during design of hardware and software, and in computer-aided production planning. However, it still is most efficient in early stages of the development process. Particularly, the modeling and simulation of dynamic systems accelerates development in early phases, for example, in feasibility studies by evaluating the potential of new topologies using virtual prototypes or in the automated and model-based design of control strategies. 502Simulation allows technical prototypes to mature quicker and at the same time reduce their number. Moreover, fewer experiments on test stands are necessary.
