Siemens Digital Industries Software introduced system NVH prediction, a new Simcenter software application bringing the benefits of a comprehensive digital twin approach to predict the interior and exterior Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) performance of a vehicle before a physical prototype is available for any vehicle: hybrid, fully electric or internal combustion engine (ICE). This new Simcenter application helps engineers front load full vehicle NVH analysis and detect potential component NVH performance issues earlier by using measured and simulated component models to build a virtual prototype assembly. Simcenter is part of Xcelerator, Siemens’ integrated portfolio of software, services, and application development platform.
NVH engineers need to carry out the in-depth analysis required to optimize performance. Electrification means the powertrains of today (and tomorrow) are much quieter than ICE units, so they won’t mask noise sources such as tires or auxiliaries including HVAC systems and wipers. Meanwhile, the need for greater numbers of variants means building physical prototypes for every variant within a reasonable timeframe and budget is impossible.
Simcenter uses a systems-engineering approach to enable the rapid creation of multiple vehicle variants. System-level component models based on test and simulation data are created by NVH experts and published to a library. These take advantage of the latest technology, such as component-basedtransfer path analysisallowing engineers to characterize the NVH sources independently from the final receiver, ensuring they are validated, scalable and reliable.
These validated components can then be rapidly assembled by non-NVH experts to represent a new variant and performance assessment can begin, reducing set-up times to a matter of minutes. This systems-based approach allows rapid reuse of available data and expertise by a much wider community of users within an organization. By enabling non experts to conduct performance prediction studies, it facilitates NVH performance assessments to be carried out at all stages of vehicle development.