Independent e-drive manufacturer Emotors has leveraged Siemens’ Simcenter solutions in the development of its next-generation electric drive (e-drive) units for hybrids, plug-ins and full-electric vehicles (EVs).
The e-drives range from 25kW to 250kW and were developed over five years. They were designed to be easily adapted to differing OEM requirements.
Headquartered in Carrières-sous-Poissy, France, Emotors was established in 2018 as a joint venture between Stellantis and Nidec Leroy-Somer. It has successfully created e-drives for Stellantis brands such as Peugeot, Opel, DS Automobile and Jeep.
A key challenge for Emotors are stringent and evolving customer specifications, particularly noise vibration harshness (NVH) acoustics.
This involves tailoring a wide range of sounds for electric vehicles, electric drivetrains and e-drives, including customized interior and exterior soundscapes, “silent” driving experiences and pedestrian warning systems (PWS) or acoustic vehicle alerting systems (AVAS).
Cédric Plasse, CTO, Emotors, said, “We design many things digitally but cannot do everything with just our digital models. To be quick-to-market and accurate, we need to calibrate our models with test measurement data. Our NVH test engineers benchmarked all the tools on the market, and it appeared quite quickly that the Siemens tools were the best.”
To address these challenges, Emotors relies on Siemens’ Simcenter Testlab software for test-based engineering and Simcenter SCADAS hardware for multi-physics measurement, as well as sound and vibration excitation systems.
These tools enable Emotors to target the best trade-offs between noise, performance and cost, the company says.
“To meet our customers’ NVH requirements, we perform classic experimental modal analysis in Simcenter Testlab,” said Bonaventure Ndong Gumedzoe, NVH testing manager, Emotors.
“We extract modal parameters, like frequency, modal shape and damping. And provide this information to the simulation team to confidently predict the NVH behavior of our Emotors’ products. The Simcenter testing solution easily takes us through the main tasks, step-by-step, from the channel setup to final measurement analysis.”