Episode 144 | Driving Design | Dassault Systemes
You’ve probably flown on a Boeing 777. A few of you may have heard that this was the first commercial airliner designed with computers.
French software giant Dassault Systemes developed that software, called Catia. Today, Catia is used to design over 70% of vehicles on the planet. My guest, Rick Sturgeon, is Dassault Systemes’ Senior Director of Transportation and Mobility. He says there are now using software to design and integrate battery systems for electric vehicles.
“At the most basic level you’re looking for improvements in energy density,” he says when it comes to an optimized power pack. His team has also integrated a software called Biovia. He says Catia, along with a modified version of Biovia, can optimize a battery system on a molecular level, and then integrate it into an EV.
In the old days, Rick says the routine for developing new batteries was “build it, test it, see what happened and do it again.”
“Now you can run hundreds of thousands of scenarios,” before needing to build a physical prototype. The savings can amount to months per iteration and the difference between a project succeeding.
The key to that integration is what they call a “virtual twin.” Then software creates a truly collaborative setting, where systems in one group can affect the whole project. Rick cites a demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show where participants were able to improve a virtual EV’s efficiency by 40% by swapping an HVAC with radiant heating.
While Rick and Dassault’s team is primarily focused on EVs, the new software could be used on bigger storage projects and other chemistries as well. Rick says the software could even help model degradation to prevent a utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) from prematurely aging. In addition to batteries, Dassault is also modeling ways to make hydrogen fuel cell vehicles more efficient.
No matter what you drive, there’s likely to be a virtual twin as well.
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