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Integrated safety systems development – Faster and easier

By Paul van Straten
Integrated safety system development - Active Human models
Integrated safety system development – Active Human models

As Autonomous Driving (AD) continues to push the outer envelope in technological advances it increases the need for new integrated safety systems. This necessitates the running of a multitude of simulation iterations, thus creating a much larger load on engineering resources. The latest release of Simcenter Madymo addresses many of these challenges.

Simcenter Madymo 2020.2 release

In this release, users will discover a significantly updated integrated safety systems application to cover many more inputs and variables. It will greatly assist in the setup of many important automotive use cases. Furthermore, we have vastly reduced the simulation time with the RESTART feature. This allows you to initiate subsequent simulations from your initial pre-crash simulation.

Integrated safety systems – Simulation time

With the use of multi-body technologies in combination with finite element modelling, Siemens finely balances detail and accuracy. As a result, its software is unrivaled with regards to setup and simulation time. The Siemens team has taken onboard the feedback from leading safety and design engineers, who highlighted the need to reduce the complexity and time required to setup integrated safety systems simulations. With this information Siemens have engineered new ways in which you can achieve the same impressive results more quickly and easily using a new Simcenter Madymo feature. We call this solution the Framework for Occupant Restraint, Testing and Evaluation (FORTE).

What is FORTE?

Pronounced – for-tay: Something in which a product, person or entity excels.

Engineers deal with large numbers of variables that complicate their simulation set up. To simplify this task, FORTE has been designed around a “modular” concept. The concept consists of one master model containing many interchangeable modules. Each individual module has its own file. You can easily modify, remove or replace it. Furthermore, the interchangeable modules provide the most widely used crash scenarios with highly relevant default values as standard settings. The application can be personalized with its user-definable elements; these allow the user to fine tune all aspects of their models.

What are the user benefits of FORTE?

Users will find it easier and less time consuming to set up simulation models for integrated safety systems and their performance assessment. The need to create new models has been almost eradicated because of the large number of tunable modules and parameters provided within the software. To closely match user requirements, only slight modifications may be necessary to the supplied models.

An engineer would often need to develop a working understanding of every aspect of the model before they could confidently build it. Now, with FORTE, users can work with a focused understanding of their area of investigation coupled with the provided essential modeling techniques. This makes it much easier for less experienced engineers to produce high quality simulations that simulate the kinematics of an occupant.

With this fully functioning simulation platform, experienced users can set up models more efficiently and novice users can produce high quality models with some degree of confidence.

RESTART

RESTART has been updated in the 2020.2 release to allow the use of the Active Human and to work with user encryption and allows you to initiate subsequent simulations from your initial pre-crash simulation. The pre-crash phase normally consists of two-thirds of the total time for a typical simulation. Tests indicate a reduction of up to 70% in the time and effort needed for DoE tests.

Simulation duration with RESTART
Simulation duration (in sec.) with RESTART

Belt-Fitter and belt contact update

The seat belt modeling functionality has been considerably enhanced and expanded. It ensures the multi-body section of the belt does not contact the dummy model. It is now significantly more robust. This update also enables much more belt material to pass through a D-ring to improve modeling of slack. Additionally, it is now possible to fit the belt without contact to the dummy surface, enabling the user to include a slacker belt setup.

Scaling tool

Our scaling tool provides the fastest and easiest way to scale our dummy and human models. We have added new features to make it even easier to use. Such as, the ability to scale models that are made up of multiple files via the use of the INCLUDE element. Scaling can now be reset to user reference values and previously scaled models. This release makes it significantly easier to scale a model and then fine tune it to a user’s needs.

Updated modeling guide

Extensive research and development have resulted in the creation of new modeling guidelines. By following these, users can confidently produce models in line with the latest best practices and modelling protocols.

MADPost Camera

Camera Viewpoint has been added to MADPost. This allows the user to reproduce the point of view as recorded with a physical camera during lab or field testing. It further contains functionality which allows the positioning of the camera from all possible angles to achieve the optimal or user preferred view of the model.

Dummy and Human updates

Several models have updates in this release. These include: CRABI child dummy (geometry and kinematics improves): Q1.5 child dummy (restraints updated); Q3 child dummy (restraints updated); Q6 child dummy (restraints updated); Q10 child dummy (restraints updated); Active Human Model (new injury criteria; contacts and restraints updated); TB024 Pedestrian Large Male (abdomen updated).

Webinar on integrated safety systems development

On October 21, Siemens will host a webinar on integrated safety systems development. During this live event the Simcenter Madymo team will talk about the newly released FORTE functionality. Do you want to learn more about this feature, or about what else is new in integrated safety systems development? Register for the webinar here. The webinar will also be available on demand after October 21.

For more information about Simcenter Madymo, you can go to the Simcenter Madymo product webpage. Alternatively you can download the Simcenter Active Human fact sheet.

This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/simcenter/develop-integrated-safety-systems-faster-and-easier/