BMW Group Selects SIMULIA Solutions for Passive Safety

VÉLIZY-VILLACOUBLAY, France — Dassault Systèmes has announced that, as an extension to the recent new five-year partnership with Dassault Systèmes, BMW Group has renewed their commitment to use Abaqus Unified FEA (finite element analysis) software for the engineering of passive safety in the automaker’s virtual design process.

Ongoing optimization of vehicle development processes at BMW for passive safety requires continuous advances in the ability to accurately predict real-world behavior. The renewed partnership with SIMULIA follows extensive evaluations carried out by BMW over several months, ranging from component-level to full-vehicle simulations and involving key applications in car body technology as well as occupant restraint systems. Their evaluation results showed that Abaqus FEA consistently delivered a higher level of predictiveness and repeatability against physical tests than other simulation software that they evaluated. This robustness and reliability is critical as BMW moves toward a more efficient and cost-effective virtual vehicle development process that depends less and less on physical prototyping and testing.

“This announcement represents an endorsement of our continuous investment in R&D and focus on providing the most reliably predictive finite element technology available today,” stated Ken Short, VP, Strategy and Marketing, SIMULIA, Dassault Systèmes. “The automotive industry is emerging from a challenging economic situation, and those companies with significant competitive advantages will be positioned well to come back faster and stronger than before. We believe that Abaqus Unified FEA can help our customers reduce time and cost in meeting increasingly rigorous standards for crashworthiness and occupant safety.”

BMW first began employing Abaqus as its exclusive tool for crash simulation in 2004, when vehicle development projects were largely supported by hardware testing and the focus of simulation was on global vehicle behavior. More recently, BMW has begun a strategic shift toward a more complete virtual development process. This strategy involves a greater reliance on the accuracy of highly detailed simulations including material rupture and failure of spot weld connections, but integrated within the scope of large, complex full-vehicle simulations. The strong correlation between physical test and simulation results obtained with Abaqus is enabling BMW to achieve its aggressive process improvement goals, resulting in substantial cost and time savings for each vehicle project, while meeting stringent safety requirements.