Virtual Vehicle
Virtual Vehicle is a leading international R&D center for the automotive and rail industries. The center focuses on the advanced virtualization of vehicle development. This linking of numerical simulations and hardware testing leads to a comprehensive hardware–software system design.
The Virtual Vehicle Research GmbH is Europe’s largest R&D center for virtual vehicle technology with 300 employees. Research priority is the linking of numerical simulations and hardware testing, which leads to a powerful HW-SW whole system design and automation of testing and validation procedures. Following this focus on industry-related research VIRTUAL VEHICLE is the innovation catalyst for future vehicle technologies.
The international partner network of VIRTUAL VEHICLE consists of around 100 national and international industrial partners (OEMs, Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers as well as software providers) as well as over 40 national and international scientific institutions.
Role
VIRTUAL VEHICLE may fill the gap between semiconductor manufacturers and the supporting electronics and software needed for the use cases. VIRTUAL VEHICLE brings in know-how and a tool to co-simulate and co-design hardware and software in real-time, i.e. capable of bridging the gap between electronic component and system level.
Being no member of the semiconductor industry, VIRTUAL VEHICLE can serve as a neutral but objective research partner to the project consortium. This is especially valuable for cross-linking technology requirements, assessing technology impacts of implemented use cases and writing case studies for dissemination. VIRTUAL VEHICLE also brings in intensive experience in requirements and systems engineering as well as in technology evaluation and impact assessment.
Key contribution
VIRTUAL VEHICLE will develop a modular and independent (co-)simulation framework for life cycle simulation of sensitive components.
There are many use cases, that require application dependent reliability models, for validation of sensitive components in an early stage of the development cycle, which are not available as of today. For realistic lifetime estimation of electronic component system design in the field of automated driving, representative annual usage (load) profiles are required. Since, VIRTUAL VEHICLE has years of experience in the field of application-oriented vehicle development and deals also with future vehicle concepts, VIRTUAL VEHICLE will analyze future driving behavior of L4 vehicles for establishing drive cycles. These drive cycles together with ambient temperature profiles, based on annual historical weather data of various locations, results in realistic load profiles.
These load profiles together with specific simulation models of hardware components, which are used in automotive applications, in a co-simulation framework enables the analyzation and identification of reliability risks at system level in an early stage. With that co-simulation, the load of the components as well as stress and aging for specific use cases can be more precisely be estimated.
Furthermore, end users can extend the co-simulation by their own domain specific simulation models to estimate the lifetime performance of their individual components under different, realistic thermal stress conditions.
Virtual Vehicle Research GmbH
Inffeldgasse 21a
8010 Graz
Austria
Phone: +43 316 873 9001
E-Mail: info@v2c2.at
www.v2c2.at