AUTOBENCH/AUTO-OPT: Towards an integrated construction environment for virtual prototyping in the automotive industry

Abstract

The present paper describes two cooperative projects (AUTOBENCH and AUTO-OPT) carried out with partners in the automotive industries (AUDI, BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Karmann and Porsche), software vendors of simulation software (ESI, INTES, INPRO, SFE) and technology providers (Uni Stuttgart, FhG-SCAI and DLR-SISTEC). Both projects aim at the development of integrated working environments for virtual automotive prototypes. Special focus is on simulation of functional behaviour of the car body, production of its parts and their improvement. New technologies have been developed for the handling of numerical grids, integration of CAE tools, numerical algorithms and visualisation. Parallel computing is supported throughout the projects on a simulation level as well as for optimisation purposes. Ongoing work concentrates on the interactive simulation and optimisation as well as the reuse of the vast amount of resulting data. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.