COExperience 2023

Model-based Systems Engineering grade Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus plant model in Dymola

Tuesday, April 18th | 11:35 – 12:25

Hydrogen Fuel Cells potentially offer a zero-emission propulsion technology for heavy commercial vehicles. Inherently a multi-physical design challenge, their development requires precise understanding of deployment conditions. Detailed simulation models, featuring physical modelling of technical systems, are useful in their development. Reducing cost and time spend can potentially be the result, as the need to conduct physical testing is reduced.

Claytex, a TECHNIA Company, have created a high-fidelity Fuel Cell electric bus model, based on a hypothetical vehicle imagined from published research. Fuel Cell components from the Hydrogen Library from Dassault Systems are deployed, allied to a HVAC system from the Thermal Systems library from TLK.

Within a full multibody chassis, the power produced by the Fuel Cell is dependent on internal pressure and temperature. Representative physical ancillary systems coupled with detailed thermochemical modelling enables detailed transient effects on fuel cell performance to be captured. Fluid based individual air supply (aspiration), hydrogen (fuel), and cooling models are featured, with ancillary control hardware. A multizonal cabin model with independent zonal thermal properties combined with a multi-physics HVAC model provide a realistic current drain on the drive battery.

Such detail is important in understanding accurately the conditions the Fuel Cell will experience in operation. A model such as this has many real-world applications, such as component design and selection; concept evaluation; Fuel Cell degradation, maintenance, and durability analysis; accurate range estimation and controller development. Evaluation using the Standardized On Road Test (SORT) suburban drive cycle, applicable to bus studies, demonstrates the model’s capabilities.

Virtual Twins in Motorsport: Deploying Dymola models in the field

Tuesday, April 18th | 15:40 – 16:30

Claytex, a TECHNIA Company, have been helping motorsports-based customers create and deploy high-fidelity digital twins for almost two decades. When it comes to motorsport, time is acutely in-focus. Whether it’s lap-time for measuring on-track performance, or development-time in the quest to optimize vehicle performance, time is critical.

Digital twins are heavily utilized to assist numerous elements of a racing team’s activities. Simple kinematic assembly models help technicians in day-to-day race vehicle assembly. Real-time-capable full-vehicle multi-body dynamics models enable the optimization of vehicle design and setup. Simulation tools built around digital twins play a substantial role in the success of a racing organization.

Deployment of digital twins within motorsport continues to evolve. Serverless deployments can be utilized with minimal licensing restriction. Since Dymola models are ultimately exported as C-code, they can be compiled into various types of binaries and deployed on several types of targets. Due to this, Dymola is a commonly selected simulation development tool in motorsport. Functional mockup units (.fmu), executables (.exe), dynamic link libraries (.dll), shared objects (.so), Motorola s-record (.s19) amongst others can be generated for a variety of operating systems and/or real-time platforms.

Deployment of digital twins in the cloud has also changed the landscape of simulation. Rather than running one-off or small batches of simulations, some organizations now choose to pre-run all likely perturbations simultaneously in ‘the cloud’ or in a cloud-like environment. What other advances exist when it comes to deployment? What use cases exist for the Digital Twin?

For the conference presentation agenda please view: The Full Conference Grid