ESI Group announces the latest release of Virtual Performance Solution (VPS). ESI’s flagship software is a unique solution allowing manufacturers to face emerging design challenges — including those related to lightweight and green vehicles — while avoiding over-engineering. It enables design and simulation engineers to test rapidly their innovations on virtual prototypes, rather than real ones, and to evaluate the impact of real driving conditions.
VPS also offers a distinctive approach, allowing the virtual testing of product performance across multiple domains, using a single core model. With this latest release of ESI Virtual Performance Solution, manufacturers can predict in a more efficient way the impact of use of composite and advanced lightweight materials on product performance, and simulate the vibration-induced noise.
Virtual Performance Solution 2016 offers new functionalities to help OEMs tackle challenges related to the introduction of new materials, and thereby enables them to design the next generation of lightweight vehicles.
Another important challenge for car makers is meeting the new environmental regulations aimed at reducing the level of noise generated by cars. The European Commission recently introduced stringent new noise limitations, which will become applicable in 2026. In the case of electric and hybrid vehicles, which are exceedingly quiet, legislators are considering adding noise so as to reduce the risk of collision with pedestrians.
To solve noise related problematics in an effective way, Virtual Performance Solution 2016 offers extended capabilities for Noise, Vibration & Harshness (NVH) and now enables the prediction of noise radiation, combining the Finite Element Method for the structure and the Boundary Element Method for the outside of the car. The same single-core model is used for the complete vehicle, which facilitates setting the correct pre-loading conditions; mandatory to high quality prediction of structural responses.
With this single core model, engineers can not only perform regulatory crash and NVH tests, they can also run virtual tests to evaluate real driving conditions. Thanks to VPS’s water flow module, they can detect potential leakages and assess how rain will affect driving visibility.
