Technology (automotive) : CAE makes vehicle testing easy

Nowadays, almost all big players in automotive industry has been using CAE (computer aided engineering) to simulate the testing for their vehicle development, especially the new model. It's not something simple, it requires engineers that are capable, experienced and expert in term of knowing how the car function or will react to certain kind of situation.The engineer need to know the necessary requirement, and could actually imagine how it works. That's why sometimes, car manufacturer hired a consultant to do CAE for them.

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Naming some of the car maker company that has been using CAE to replace actual testing is BMW, Audi, Proton, KIA, and many more. The reason why is most of them willing to invest million of dollar is that they see the future in this facilities. They opted to spend now, rather than spending money to do actual test every time they come up with new development, and to conduct an actual test requires actual car, and it cost almost like producing one car, or could be more. In other word - the company would save millions of dollar by not producing an actual car every time they want to test the car (development).

Another reason why they using CAE is to minimize the time for producing a new model. Normally, for one new model, made from scratch, it'll took roughly around 2 to 3 years, and sometimes could be more. Thus, they saw CAE as an option to reduce development time, because normally, testing a new product took more than half of the new product development time! More time equivalent to more development cost, as they need to pay the staff salary, invest in the testing material etc. Hence, using CAE, they can try and manipulate the variable all they want and would not waste money to have many iteration, as the simulation can produce the exact same result as the actual, without having to use the actual car! Isn't that amazing!

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The software used by CAE engineers includes Hyperworks, Abaqus, Marc, Patran, Femfat, and many more. Most of the software are user-friendly, and anyone could simply learn how to use them easily. But the hardest part is to understand the calculation behind it (analysis). As a CAE engineer, they must know how to interpret the analysis result because not many people understand the contour plot result produce by the software.

Yes, CAE has been used a long time ago by other industries such as oil and gas, civil, etc, but it is new in the automotive industry (less than 10 years). All these time, they only trusted what they can see in actual. But as time goes, CAE analysis result could match almost 99% of actual test correlation. Hence, the many big players in the automotive industry opted to switch for CAE as they could save the development cost, as well as development time.

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