On the 14th of December, FCC hosted a one-day seminar with our German partner Fraunhofer ITWM. Participants were mainly from the Swedish Automotive industry, including CEVT, NEVS, Scania and Volvo to name a few. The seminar covered state-of-the-art technologies within virtual manufacturing used in the German Vehicle industry.

Dr. Johan S. Carlsson presented the core competences of FCC in virtual product and manufacturing, including modelling, optimization and visualization of geometries and motions in manual and robotized assembly processes and Multiphysics simulations among others.

Dr. Almut Eisenträger presented the Finite Pointset Method (FPM), a purely meshfree numerical method for applications in industry related fluid flows, which does not suffer from performance limits of existing CFD methods (Finite Element Method FEM, Finite Differences Method, Finite Volume Method FVM) with respect to grid generation and adaption. Industrial applications of FPM in the car industry shown at the presentation included tank filling and sloshing, water crossing and aquaplaning and foaming processes among others.

Dr. Klaus Dreßler presented CDTire/3D, a complete 3D shell based model of sidewalls, belt and tread pattern. Applications shown included simulation of a sudden inflation pressure loss and its effect on vehicle stability, wearing of tires and advanced handling applications.

A new MATLAB toolbox: Controller Design for Active Vibration Damping developed mutually by Volkswagen AG and Fraunhofer ITWM was presented by Dr. rer. nat Andreas Wirsen. The toolbox is used for minimizing vibrations coming from the drivetrain and engine.

Dr. Volker Maag presented a Multicritera Optimization software, used for multicriteria processes and product design by companies like Siemens, BASF, John Deere and others. The presentation included examples in cost savings in optimization processes, better quality figures and standardized modules allowing for rapid prototyping.

Dipl. Inf Markus Rauhut presented the modular system MASC- Modular Algorithms for Surface Inspection. It is an image processing tool for automated surface inspection, allowing higher quality of products and cost reduction for quality control. The MASC system is utilized Audi AG, Continental and Hübert Stuken among others.

Dr. Jochen Zausch presented the Battery and Electrochemistry Simulation Tool (BEST), a software for physics-based simulation of lithium-ion batteries. BEST simulates physical processes occurring in batteries and takes three-dimensional geometric aspects into account. Applications include computer-aided cell design, aging and degradation effects. BEST has been used Opel AG, Wolkswagen AG, Daimler AG among others.

Dr. Franz-Josef Pfreundt presented his work on High Performance Data Analytics at the Competence Center for HPC at Fraunhofer ITWM. The presentation included applications of machine learning, parallel programming and deep learning in the industry, used for example in the renewable energy and the oil and gas market.

We hope that the seminar opened up further possibilities to strengthen the collaboration between the German and the Swedish Automotive industries. We thank Fraunhofer ITWM and the participants from the industry for a day with great presentations and interesting discussions!