Theme 1 - Analysis of the Vehicle as a Complex System

The rise of the digital economy and the associated increase in demand for customised products has caused the modern premium automotive vehicle to become a complex system. Integration is expected to have increasing levels of influence on innovation for manufacturing processes. This research on the complexity of digital features concentrates on advanced manufacturing facilities for virtual integration and verification for the provision of 'Getting it right first time through good design for speed to market'. As the digital enablement of vehicles become more complex, automotive manufacturing requires a new innovative approach into modelling and simulating with improved analysis tools to successfully integrate existing technologies and processes alongside new technology to meet increasing market demand. Each of these systems requires to be successfully integrated within the vehicle to achieve a global goal. System of systems engineering (SoSE) focuses on the management and control of such complex systems, which offer more functionality and performance than the individual systems themselves. Thus, the strategic intent of the research for the Programme for Simulation Innovation is to use innovations in modelling and simulation to evolve state of the art capabilities in vehicle design and analysis for manufacturing into advanced SoSE, for the digital features of a high interaction multi-disciplinary complex vehicle.

This research addresses the challenge of how to use innovative modelling and simulation for rigorous design and analysis to rapidly and reliably introduce substantially increased levels of digitally-enabled functionality into the complex vehicle. The system of systems engineering activities include:

-System architecting to define structure and behaviour of the systems of the vehicle
-Generation of a framework to enable traceability and relationship preserving specification to aid integration of existing and new technologies
-Analysis and behaviour prediction of the vehicle to include the simulation of non-deterministic outputs within a virtual environment to reduce prototyping and time to market.
-Greater concurrence in design and verification by the facility to analyse the fully integrated complex vehicle within its simulated environment.

The research will specify and implement a Virtual Integration Design and Analysis environment (VIDAE) that integrates simulation from multiple disciplinary systems (e.g. chassis, driver, power train, etc.) within the design and analysis environment, to facilitate advanced modelling and analysis capabilities for the vehicle as a complex system. The prime objective is the improvement of current automotive manufacturing processes to reduce the time to market and thus increase the UK competitiveness with the global economy.

The research will demonstrate an innovative path to the commercialisation of academic outputs for systems and SoS engineering that will provide academics and industry with new pioneering processes. This will give the UK a competitive edge by increasing the speed to market of academic research for systems engineering. The research also leverages key international collaborations for model based systems engineering (MBSE) that will better position the UK in the current research in the relevant international organisations.

The multi-disciplinary team from Loughborough and Leeds Universities will deliver a joint research programme that addresses the challenges of SoSE for the vehicle as a complex system. New capabilities for rapid introduction of digitally enabled functionality with reduced physical prototyping will be enabled through (i) a formal framework and rigorous methods for an innovative integration of simulation and design analytics with design verification and (ii) an engineering environment for virtual design and analysis.

The most direct beneficiaries of this research will be Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and the wider UK automotive OEM industry. The new architectural approaches, Virtual Integrated Design and Analysis Environment (VIDAE) and modelling capabilities developed through this theme of the Programme for Simulation Innovation (PSI), will give JLR and other companies a range of potential benefits many of which will positively impact on other organisation as well as society and the economy. JLR have provided a letter of support for this application which details some of the impacts they expect to see realised as a result of this project. When describing the potential impact of the research, we refer to benefits to JLR though these ought to also be equally true of other OEM automotive manufacturers too.

Enabling JLR to move towards 100% design verification (i.e. cut down the number of prototype vehicles built during their new product development cycle to the minimum), should result in large cost and time savings. In addition to the direct savings from carrying out less prototyping and real-world testing, having the ability to respond more quickly to demands for new or modified products driven by market demand, legislation or other factors, will give JRL a competitive advantage in their sector. JLR's letter of support to this project specifically mentions that they anticipate being able to achieve a 20% reduction in the time taken to integrate new digital features.

A more profitable JLR will pay more tax to the UK government providing wide-spread benefit to the UK. JLR may also be able to employ more workers as demand for their products increases due to their first-to-market advantage. Even if an increase in workforce is not realised, the benefits bought by the outputs of this theme and the broader PSI outputs will certainly help to secure existing jobs across JLRs five UK production and R&D sites. Higher JLR production output will also impact on its many UK suppliers who will share in the financial benefits of increased demand and also contribute increased amounts to the UK exchequer.

As well as accelerating the design process and enabling greater responsiveness to market demand, tools from this project such as the VIDE will also allow greater optimisation of targeted design parameters. For example, it will become much easier to find the optimum trade offs in performance and CO2 emissions from vehicles which will provide environmental benefits. This is another impact specifically highlighted by JLR's letter of support where they indicate that the research being carried out in this theme will help bring about reductions of CO2 of 5% to 10% in vehicle emissions. In the future this may also be true of other requirements such as safety system performance which will provide another social benefit by improving crash worthiness of cars and reducing injuries.

There are many more potential economic beneficiaries beyond the automotive sector. Any complex system which needs to be designed could potential benefit from this research. Those best aligned to benefit are other vehicle manufacturing industries such as aerospace and railway rolling stock manufacturers. Nuclear power station, defence equipment and chemical process plant design are other potential applications although these are slightly further removed from the outputs of the research. These applications would most likely require further research work to adapt the techniques being developed to address their needs adequately.

Additional impact will come from the skills development and training which will take place as part of the project. This will include five PhD students who will benefit from extensive training as researchers and also the PDRAs involved in the project who will benefit through the career development opportunities afforded by taking part in a large multi-disciplinary research programme such as PSI and the involvement of a large multi-national company such as JLR.