Automotive

Engineering Tasks

• System Specification and Modeling
• Embedded System Design
• System Integration, Calibration, and Dynamometer Testing
• Vehicle Analysis and Validation

System Specification and Modeling

Vehicle systems have been evolving over the past several years to the point where almost all major functionality is now a combination of mechanical, electrical, and software implementation. Developing these systems often involves multiple departments and engineering disciplines, and requires access to many different vehicle systems.

To address the complexity involved in developing today's systems, automotive manufacturers and suppliers are using mathematical models to describe the behavior of the vehicle system and simulate expected performance and validate requirements. Simulating these models lets designers:

• Research new ideas
• Discover potential limitations or errors in system design
• Refine early in the design cycle, before costly physical prototypes are created

Vehicle-Level and System-Level Modeling
The Simulink® product family gives you the ability to construct mathematical models of vehicles, subsystems, and components. Simulink and Stateflow® software , SimMechanics™, and SimPowerSystems™ provide capabilities for modeling and simulating many different vehicle systems and associated control algorithms, enabling you to:

• Analyze the powertrain for vehicle performance, fuel economy, and emissions trade-offs
• Evaluate vehicle capabilities and distribution of functionality across multiple systems for vehicle stability control or advanced crash avoidance systems
• Model environmental systems to develop sophisticated climate controls and engine cooling systems
• Model and simulate advanced communication, wireless, and GPS-based navigation systems

This multidomain model of a power window system includes models of the control system, the electrical and motor drive system, and the window mechanical system. Test cases and verification blocks are included, allowing an engineer to simulate the entire window system to test functionality and safety issues such as the insertion of an object as the window is closing. Click on image to see enlarged view.

You can use the many MATLAB® toolboxes and Simulink blocksets for specific functionality, or create your own customized model libraries to coordinate the design process within your organization and across OEM-supplier boundaries.

Physical Systems Modeling
For multidomain automotive subsystems, MathWorks tools enable the design of mechanical and electrical systems in concert with control systems. With the Simulink, SimMechanics, and SimPowerSystems products you can:

• Design and model physical systems such as power windows, vehicle suspension, and custom test fixtures
• Import SolidWorks CAD models
• Simulate and animate the system in operation to analyze your design
• Perform structural analysis and data visualization

Integration with Other Modeling Tools
Simulink provides an open framework for integrating additional capabilities offered in products from our partners, including:

• GT-Power, Ricardo WAVE, and FLOWMASTER for powertrain development
• CarSim, TruckSim, and ADAMS models for vehicle and chassis development
• VisualNASTRAN for mechanical modeling
• Structural Dynamics Toolbox for modal analysis and finite element modeling
  with MATLAB
• AMESim and DECOMSYS products for application-specific development

Simulink cosimulates system behavior represented in these tools, providing access to models of different fidelity for design and verification purposes, all on a desktop computer.

Engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Lab model automotive system using Simulink. Their custom design environment, ADVISOR, allows designers to evaluate vehicle designs without building prototype systems. This picture shows a model of a fuel cell powerplant. Click on image to see enlarged view.

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