Single-click solution for automotive design

Opal-RT Technologies and Mechanical Simulation Corporation (MSC) have joined forces to add the real-time capabilities of Opal-RT's RT-Lab to MSC's flagship product, CarSim.

Opal-RT Technologies and Mechanical Simulation Corporation (MSC) have joined forces to add the real-time capabilities of Opal-RT's RT-Lab to MSC's flagship product, CarSim.

The announcement occurred at Convergence 2002, taking place this week at Cobo Hall in Detroit.

RT-Lab is a real-time environment that revolutionises the way model-based design is performed within the engineering organisation.

Through its openness, RT-Lab has the flexibility to be applied to any simulation and control problem, and scalability to provide a low-risk entry point for any application, allowing the developer to add computation power where and when needed-whether to dramatically speed up simulations or for real-time hardware-in-the-loop applications.

CarSim is a software package for simulating and analysing the way cars, light trucks, and SUVs (with or without trailers) respond to steering, braking, and acceleration inputs.

Using RT-Lab, real-time-enabled CarSim-RT maths models can be executed in hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) systems.

CarSim-RT includes the option to run database and visualisation software on a "host" computer running Windows, with math models running in real-time on a "target" computer.

"RT-Lab's flexible real-time environment is ideal for extending CarSim's capabilities into HIL testing", said Steve Hann, President of MSC.

"Opal-RT's RT-Lab has fast gained a positive reputation as the 'go to' technology for engineers seeking to conduct simulations of control systems with high fidelity and fault tolerance requirements.

"CarSim has revolutionised the way automotive engineers simulate and analyse vehicle driver controls", said Paul Goossens, Opal-RT Technologies Vice President of Marketing.

"CarSim's self-contained and extendible nature made real-time enabling it much easier - in turn further simplifying the engineer's job of conducting sophisticated simulations using HIL".

The combination of CarSim-RT with RT-Lab offers superior functionality and performance at costs substantially lower than comparable HIL systems and meets the three criteria for an ideal HIL system for automotive components development and performance evaluation/testing.

First, CarSim-RT uses accurate and validated vehicle dynamics models, written in CMEX, that have stable and efficient numerical integration with a user-friendly GUI for defining and managing vehicle models, their parameters and simulations.

Secondly, RT-Lab, which acts as the real-time simulation framework between the vehicle dynamics model and hardware, uses low cost commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) PC hardware and takes a model-based approach that allows models that are developed in the design stage, often by different engineering groups or suppliers, to be incorporated into the simulation.

Finally, and most importantly, CarSim vehicle dynamics models and RT-Lab are tightly integrated for maximum user-friendliness.

Running an HIL simulation becomes a "single-click" operation with automatically generated real-time plots and animations.

The CarSim-RT and RT-Lab solution is available now.

Back to top