Though the following events represent an actual, real-world story, the lessons can be applied across the spectrum of automotive manufacturers and suppliers looking to inject more intelligence and efficiency into the process of maturing design concepts.

An automotive company was finalizing — or attempting to sign-off — the heat protection and thermal management design on a vehicle. Originally assuming that it was near the end-stage of the design, real-world testing proved otherwise, in a costly and time-intensive lesson learned.

Once on the testing track, the vehicle’s heat shield failed to perform to the manufacturer’s standards. Back it went, into design, through prototyping and eventually back into testing.

Failure.

Back into design, back into prototyping, back to the test track.

Failure again.

This cycle repeated itself…five times!

With each iteration came delays, frustration, and significant time and materials costs, including labor hours, travel costs, testing facility expenses, and plain old opportunity costs inherent in production delays. 

The source of the problem ended up being due to time-dependent thermal behavior of the heat protection system under a real-world  transient driving condition, because simulation conducted in early phases did not address transient phenomena

Though seemingly astonishing — and obviously costly — this scenario has been far too customary for far too long. But thanks to advancements in simulation technology and analytical methodology, such scenarios should be facing extinction — if forward-thinking manufacturers, engineers and designers adopt the proven science now at their avail.

The Increasing Costs of “Test-and-Fix”

The traditional methods illustrated above should no longer represent the modern reality. Car and truck manufacturers are moving away from the inefficient “test-and-fix” ways of the past toward more sophisticated, intelligent ways to infuse greater efficiency into the design and production lifecycle when introducing or redesigning vehicle models.

What if, instead of the repetitive “test-and-fix, test-and-fix, test-and-fix,” a manufacturer could efficiently and accurately predict failures and precisely fix them before they ever reached the testing phase?

 

Imagine, in the case study referenced above, if all of that testing, remediation and retesting could have been performed in the virtual realm. Think of the cost savings. Imagine the time savings. Consider how that time and money could be better invested into the company.

Simulation provides all of this. Sophisticated thermal analysis software, when properly coupled with the appropriate CFD solutions, creates a time- and cost-saving virtual phase that should come before physical testing in the real world, so that physical testing becomes a validation of concept, rather than a testing grounds.Once you have accounted for most (if not all) of the real-world driving scenarios in the simulation environment, the OEM must then only validate these findings in the physical world at the end of the design/production lifecycle.

Why return to the test track five times? In fact, physical testing like this is not an efficient way to identify and isolate the problem. As a result, all too often you are returning to the testing environment without ever having solved the real problem in the first place!

Simulation would allow the design team to “test” in a simulated environment, identify real-world issues that will be present in the eventual real world, and then allow for remediation — before a prototype is ever developed or deployed for testing. Because newer technology performs simulation using a transient analysis approach, rather than mere steady-state analysis, designers and engineers are uncovering and solving issues more predictively and more precisely than ever before.

The result is that, while you may have injected a new phase further upstream in the design process, you have actually eliminated several phases downstream — phases that cost time, cost money, and in the worst-case scenarios, create potential for failure when the product ultimately goes to market. Those are the mistakes that you can’t easily undo.

“An Update to Your Software is Available for Download.”

If you haven’t evaluated your existing methods, software and processes for thermal management in the last five years, the reality is that you are likely out-of-date. So many advancements in the power, agility, intelligence, efficiency and performance of simulation technology have occurred in even the last five years alone that even systems put in place just a few years ago have now been rendered largely obsolete.

The risk is not just that you’re using older technology…it’s that you’re leaving time, money and even liability on the proverbial table.

We used to oversimplify testing scenarios out of necessity. But that necessity is a relic of the past. Not only has hardware matured to the point where CPU output is light years ahead of what it was a decade ago, software has matured to the point at which a simulation technology such as TAITherm can couple with a CFD solution to perform a complex test using a fraction of the CPUs necessary to perform a CFD analysis alone.

This convergence of advanced hardware capabilities and transcendent software robustness makes now the imperative time for automotive manufacturers and designers to take a critical but informed eye at the tools and trade they are using to build greater efficiency and accuracy into their product design lifecycle.

If you’re still spending time and money on “test-and-fix,” it’s time to consider how “fix, then test” would change the dynamics of your team, your processes and even your entire enterprise.