Simulator specialist VI-grade says that British sports car manufacturer Aston Martin Lagonda has adopted its COMPACT Simulator.
The company notes that today’s vehicle development programs are increasingly demanding, simultaneously requiring cost and time reductions while also improving quality. Traditional engineering approaches are hard-pressed to successfully address these requirements, as these two targets are hardly compatible. As a result, Aston Martin Lagonda is steadily moving toward a more virtual environment, employing vehicle models and simulation tools to embed traditional development steps into a virtual model that would usually be carried out on a physical proving ground. This is achieved by creating a digital twin of the vehicle.
By using the COMPACT Simulator Aston Martin will be able to conduct numerous tests on the virtual vehicle model at an early stage, well before building a first prototype. The Driving Simulator application allows various elements of the vehicle’s behavior to be tested and potential error sources to be identified and eliminated much earlier in the development process. This leads to higher reliability and confidence in the prototypes and more effective testing, which in the end results in a higher quality of the final vehicle.
“We have identified that by the use of virtual tools and simulation, the expenditure profile of a project is smoother and is reduced throughout the life of the product development process, and that’s because any error states that you find, you find them at the very beginning of the program, before you committed to any tooling, or you’re committed to any production parts,” said Jose Barcelo, chassis/vehicle dynamics CAE manager at Aston Martin Lagonda.
“In our development activities, we are always trying to be as cost effective as possible, trying to reduce the time of the programs, and by doing so, we are also reducing the cost of the programs.”