CAE Supported ESC Development/Release Process

Abstract

The take rate of Electronic Stability Control (ESC) systems is constantly growing worldwide. From 2012 onwards ESC systems are mandatory for all new vehicles in the North American and European markets. Due to the continuously growing amount of models and variants, and due to the shortened time for bringing a vehicle to the market, the ESC development and tuning work is increasing rapidly. In addition, the Ford product development process requests ESC performance for the initial prototype release without a physical prototype being available. All these challenges increase the demands on development and sign-off for both the ESC suppliers and for Ford as the vehicle manufacturer. Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) is an enabler to help resolve these issues. A “CAE supported ESC development and release process” (hereafter “CAE process”) has been set up to support these requirements. Within the project, the team developed the CAE process from virtual vehicle testing for the initial ESC design to the ESC performance check in the Software-In-the-Loop (SIL) environment. The corresponding tool chain was developed and verified. The whole CAE environment including post processing and reporting is shared with the ESC supplier. To have confidence in the CAE process, a correlation study with defined test and validation procedures was executed together with the ESC suppliers to verify the entire tool chain. Both Ford and supplier testing catalogues were performed. The simulation results were compared with the real-world tests. Correlation workshops with different vehicle programmes showed positive results, so that both Ford and the suppliers were convinced to jointly run the CAE process. The CAE process is so far well accepted, implemented and applied by the ESC suppliers, so that the initial ESC release can be done without physical vehicle prototypes. This CAE process may also be extended for other chassis and driver assistance functions/features. The latest regulation of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) R13-H allows a CAE based homologation. Following the same validation principle and model fidelity requirement, the same simulation environment can be utilised for ESC certification. This provides further advantage of time saving and completes the CAE usage from ESC development to homologation.

F2012-E03-021