b'Automotive & Transportation | Engineer Innovationovercome the bad: they retained the beautiful Italian design of their cars, which held a lot of appeal to their customers, but significantly upgraded the technology. The result is a luxury electric hybrid sedan that maintains much of the original exterior and interior of the Fisker Karma, but incorporates an A123 battery, charger and electrical controls. It is the car you drive when you want to be seen, says Bob Kruse, chief technical officer of Karma Automotive.As a startup, Karma had to address some of the typical consequences of limited resources. For one, time is more expensive for startups than for established players. Also, there are result, digitalization truly has become atestPolarion is one hardly, if any, second chances. As aA well-oiled tandem of simulation and matter of life and death. It is now ofWhen we took this project on, it wasnt more crucial importance than ever thatonly about the development of thetracking tool to models and analytics properly duplicateproduct, but also of the process that we what happens in the physical world, sowere building at Karma, explains Erikcascade targets that when we do go back to the actualKeipper, director of vehicle integration vehicle, the virtually obtained solutionsat Karma Automotive. The partnership fit with a high degree of confidence we put together with Siemens reallydown from and they actually are going to work,allowed seamless interaction from the Kruse confirms. program managers, engineers andvehicle level all technicians.A relentless pursuit of excellent NVHWith a hybrid-electric sports car, engineOne of the keys to success for such anthe way to noise is a key performance attribute tooverarching vehicle development manage throughout the entireprogramfeaturing not just productcomponent development process. Engine noisebut also processis to frontload the needs to be brand-specific. This isnt anvehicle design definition phase as much easy task, because there is no history ofas possible, such that last-minute,level, then goes what an electric sports car engine shouldexpensive corrections in the validation sound like, says Jud Knittel, noise,phase can be reduced to their absoluteback up to vibration and harshness (NVH) leadminimum or even avoided. Karma engineer at Karma Automotive. selected Simcenter 3D software for this task. Combining all the necessaryvalidate the car The main issue with hybrid-electric carshigh-end solutions and solvers, is that the lack of the noise-maskingSimcenter 3D also allows forat each of the effect of a combustion engine makes aoptimization of different attributes, lot of other sounds more apparent, suchwith best-in-class computer-aided as road or HVAC noise. Much more effortengineering (CAE) pre- andintermediate must be applied to reduce these noisepostprocessing capabilities and the sources than for traditional cars. Insoftwares unique CAD-integrated andand full-vehicle addition, efforts to optimize NVH canmanaged environment. In particular, actually become counterproductive ifKarma used Simcenter 3Ds hybrid they have a negative impact on othermodeling method to frontload thelevels.attributes such as such as weight,overall vehicle optimization effort strength, durability and ride comfort. across multiple performance attributes.Garren Salibian In this approach, components underLead of Vehicle Integration Using testing and simulation (sometimesdevelopment are modeled with 3D CAEKarma Automotivesimultaneously) is essential inand existing ones with accurate reduced maintaining this balance. Karmarepresentations derived from tests understood this at the very beginning ofresults, such as frequency response the development project. functions (FRFs) and modes.63'