In this webinar, we will present outcomes and reflections from the “Towards a Rational approach to credibility of nUmerical SimulaTions in Industrial applicaTions” (TRUSTIT) project.

Project TRUSTIT

Led by RISE (a state-owned technical research institute in Sweden) in close collaboration with Volvo Cars, the research project specifically focused on the large-scale integration of uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis into industrial CAE workflows, particularly in the context of the automotive industry.

Background

Growing trends in product development such as virtual testing and left-shifting rely on the extensive use of numerical simulations to make design decisions as early as possible and concentrate resources for physical testing on more mature prototypes, for which the risk of unexpected failures requiring major modifications should be lower. A necessary condition for the successful implementation of such simulation-intensive programs is the reliability of the predictions made from the computational models.

Simulation Governance is the ensemble of procedures that organizations set up to ensure that the predictive capability of numerical simulations is adequate for their intended use (essentially, a Quality Assurance function tailored to CAE activities). Model verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification fall within the scope of Simulation Governance.

The systematic, large-scale implementation of Simulation Governance is often hindered by:

• Lack of dedicated resources, including time.
• A skills gap resulting from a lack of access to best practice methods.
• Lack of guidance on how to translate key concepts and methods from the scientific context where they originate to an industrial research and development environment.
• Lack of clarity on tangible benefits.

This often results in either the complete exclusion of uncertainty quantification from regular simulation activities or the use of exceedingly conservative or inefficient approaches.

Project Aims

The research project aimed at identifying ways to overcome simulation governance implementation hurdles, bringing attention to the challenges that typically arise for individual engineers as well as across the entire enterprise. The initial part of the project focused on creating a common understanding of key definitions and methods for uncertainty management through a series of interactive workshops with simulation experts, striving to connect theoretical concepts to real-life practice.

The translation of incomplete or subjective knowledge regarding input quantities and the interpretation of uncertainty measures evaluated for simulation output were addressed during these workshops. Sampling methods were demonstrated on a realistic use case represented by the virtual coastdown test, which is designed to estimate the total force opposing vehicle propulsion using simulation results instead of physical tests.

The webinar will also include a discussion of an accessible in-house tool released at the end of the project for integrating uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis in existing simulation workflows aimed at building confidence in the results of numerical simulations.

The TRUSTIT project was publicly funded by the Swedish innovation agency VINNOVA