Technology Day

Virtual measurement campaign (VMC®) and usage simulation (U·Sim) – combining geo-referenced analysis of road data and usage simulation models for durability and energy efficiency in vehicle development VMC® supports the statistical assessment of durability loads, fuel consumption, and emission in vehicle development by systematically evaluating geo-referenced data. This complements and enhances the currently used methods and is a big step forward in view of designing vehicle performance for different
markets.

VMC GeoStatistics enables a vehicle independent analysis of different regions or routes. The focus is on properties of the road network including curves, altitudes, slopes, traffic signs, traffic, climate etc. This aims at comparing or ranking different markets with respect to their potential impact on durability, fuel consumption, and more general reliability properties, e. g., for electronic
control units.

The module VMC Speed Profiles complements this analysis with information about the expected longitudinal, lateral or vertical dynamics on the corresponding routes within a region based on simple vehicle models. An important application of these methods is to analyze, whether the load, fuel consumption, or emission on a given route represents the corresponding quantity of a typical usage vehicle in a certain market.

The module VMC GeoLDA automatically maps signals, collected on public roads, to the road network and assigns the corresponding road properties to signal segments. That way, the data is decomposed into different operating states (road types …), enables a deeper understanding of the important influence quantities and prepares the extrapolation of the data to the entire vehicle life.

The software U·Sim complements the VMC approach by taking into account the way vehicles are used. Adding corresponding models for specific customer groups (expressed in the distribution of operating states such as road types, payload, driving style etc.), measured data is extrapolated to a large number of potential customers and load distributions for specific populations can be
derived and compared to each other.

The modelling and simulation techniques in exploring the usage variability are accompanied by the possibility to perform 3D measurements of road profiles and environment.