Successful LMS-FAW collaboration takes durability engineering to the next level

China’s largest automotive R&D institute integrates a streamlined LMS process to produce more reliable cars

The FAW Group, a global leader in the vehicle manufacturing industry, recently upgraded its durability engineering process with the assistance of LMS International. A team from LMS Engineering Services and LMS’ local Chinese experts completed a successful technology transfer at FAW's state-of-the-art government-certified engineering development and test center in Changchun, The center is the largest and most extensive automotive R&D facility in China.

Mr. Wang, Responsible for Body CAE and Project Leader at FAW stated, “We selected LMS mainly because of the consolidated hybrid methodology approach. Next to excellent local support, LMS offers integrated solutions for the complete durability cycle process.”

The collaboration started with a complete fatigue life analysis and prediction project, which included road load data acquisition and processing, multi-body model construction, full vehicle simulation for target cascading, hybrid road modeling with a tire model to obtain equivalent road profile displacements, and body fatigue life analysis using load time histories.

“Following the success of the first project, we decided to acquire further LMS products to take our durability engineering process to the next level. The offering for road load data processing is particularly feature rich. For example, LMS TecWare calculates the optimal mix of test track sections that match our target customer usage with respect to fatigue. We now rely on LMS TecWare for road load data processing, LMS Virtual.Lab Motion for precise ride and handling maneuver simulation, LMS Virtual.Lab Motion-TWR for accurate road loads prediction and LMS Virtual.Lab Durability for fatigue life prediction. Software solutions from LMS have proven to be extremely dependable and accurate,” added Mr. Wang.

A vital part of the FAW engineering process is the LMS Virtual.Lab Motion-TWR (Time Waveform Replication) virtual test rig. This new durability solution lets engineers perform system-level durability loads replication and highly accurate road load predictions. Its best-in-class, multi-body solver, Motion-TWR, provides correct input data for the LMS Virtual.Lab Durability fatigue solver.

Dirk De Vis, LMS Vice-President, LMS Engineering Services, added, “We are delighted to expand our successful collaboration with a leading car manufacturer, such as FAW. We are confident that through these joint engineering projects, we can not only support the development of better cars, but also empower customers to deploy our integrated durability engineering process to engineer more reliable cars in even less time.”

About FAW

FAW Group is a global leader in the vehicle manufacturing industry with a 50-year history of innovation. Founded in 1953, FAW employs 133,000 people around the world and sells products in over 70 countries. FAW is a diversified maker of quality light, medium, and heavy-duty trucks, automobiles, municipal buses and luxury tourist coaches, custom bus chassis, and mini-vehicles with total sales in excess of 7 million vehicles worldwide. FAW maintains the lead market position within China while continuing to expand into new international markets, executing a carefully planned strategy to build a comprehensive global organization.

About LMS International

LMS, the leading partner in test and mechatronic simulation in the automotive, aerospace and other advanced manufacturing industries, helps customers get better products to market faster. With a unique combination of mechatronic simulation software, testing systems and engineering services, LMS tunes into mission critical engineering attributes, ranging from system dynamics, structural integrity and sound quality to durability, safety and power consumption. With multi-domain and mechatronic simulation solutions, LMS addresses complex engineering challenges associated with intelligent system design and model-based systems engineering. More than 1150 LMS professionals serve over 5000 manufacturing companies worldwide.