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September 2008 |
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Steve Sapsford, president What trends are affecting the way users use your software? The major drivers today are fuel economy and emissions, as well as process improvements to deal with increasing computational power. Fuel economy and emissions drivers are tending to push us to implement new physical models for combustion and emissions formation, as well as aftertreatment. This has led to interactions with chemical analysis tools and the implementation of kinetics solutions within our software. Generally increasing dependency on simulation in favour of testing has meant that we're further examining how to make our tools communicate better and take advantage of cheaper computing solutions, including multi-processor machines and distributed computing. Further increases in dependency on simulation means greater interaction with engine controls, and hence the ability to develop controls-capable models (e.g. the ability to run on HiL systems).
How is this affecting the way you will design the next generation of your software? We are currently integrating the entire suite of products in a single interface for pre-/post-processing. We are also changing our licensing model to accommodate changes in computing hardware, allowing distributed computing and taking advantage of multi-core processors in desktop machines. We are also focusing on the development of HiL capable solutions. Are there any simple ways you see for automotive engineers to improve the intelligence of their development processes? We've found that OEMs don't always have time to fine-tune their processes. The customer support role is therefore more important now than ever: spending significant time with the customer to help them use the CAE tools to their utmost capabilities means the customer can stay on the cutting edge of applications technology. What's holding your software's ability back? The main hurdles are processor speed (getting to real time with current algorithms) and new technologies. With hybrid powertrains increasingly being adopted, as well as new combustion technologies and fuel cells etc, being able to model the physics of the latest powertrain technologies accurately while maintaining and improving legacy systems becomes a challenge. What are you doing to make the software more useful to engineers? Understanding customers' processes is key to improving software. Simulation software is hardly ever used in isolation anymore: it needs to interact with other, external software tools, like MS-Excel and MATLAB/Simulink. Spending time with users to map out their processes gives the software supplier both an opportunity to put its best foot forward in demonstrating how its software can be better implemented in the user's working practices, and also understand what the user community really needs to make significant improvements in their processes in the future.
What is the next big step for your software? Developing all of our software to be interactive in a single simulation environment will present new capabilities for the future in sharing FE/CFD data and 1D/3D simulation results, etc. Further enhancements to translate other products' FE input/output and work with other 3rd-party modelling tools will make workflows quicker and easier. How do you see the software industry evolving in the next five years? Automation of testing is helping with quality and reducing cycle time. There seems to be a growing market for testing tools in the software world, and we foresee this increasing. There seems to have been a significant increase in mergers and acquisitions over the past few years, but it doesn't seem to have had a significant impact on interoperability of tools or consolidation of technologies. While simulation in the auto industry is maturing and becoming widely accepted in some areas (e.g. CFD, FEA, gas dynamics), there is always a growing list of applications and methods and more dependence upon simulation technologies, so new competitors will enter the market, increasing overall competition. |
Hundreds of automotive engineers at dozens of OEMs and Tier One suppliers use Ricardo Software products across Europe. The main applications of Ricardo Software products are in the powertrain simulation (both fluid and mechanical) area - analysing air, fuel, oil, and liquid flows inside the engine and mechanical simulation of the valvetrain, cranktrain, and power cylinder components. We've also extended our suite to simulate the transmission and drivetrain, as well as external aerodynamics. LINKS Ansys: multi-physics analysis pays off. Read more... Integrated: Electromagnetic CAE tools that combine FEA and simulation. Read more... Lotus: vehicle dynamics made quick and easy. Read more...
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