Automotive Simulations in the Cloud

The global automotive simulation market is projected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.1% during the forecast period, from USD 1.4 billion in 2018 to USD 2.9 billion by 2025, according to a recent market study from ResearchAndMarkets.com. Major software companies contributing to this market growth are Altair, Ansys, Autodesk, AVL, Comsol, Dassault Systemes, ESI, Mathworks, PTC, Siemens, and Synopsys, but there are also a few hundred smaller CAE software companies which provide more specialized simulation software to the automotive industry.

Recently, more and more automotive OEMs and their suppliers are moving automotive simulations to cloud computing resources. The cloud segment of the automotive simulation market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Various benefits over the on-premises segment such as pay-per-use model, flexibility, ease of accessibility, faster and/or more simulations, and low installation and maintenance costs are driving the growth of the automotive cloud simulation market segment.

Automotive simulations in the cloud 

To study the challenges and the benefits of automotive simulations in the cloud, over the past six years, UberCloud partnered with engineers from the automotive industry. This was part of our over 200 cloud simulation projects with engineers from all kinds of application areas, many of them in the manufacturing industries. So far, we have published 18 e-books (Compendiums) of case studies, and recently a Compendium of 10 selected UberCloud case studies dealing with automotive applications, such as vehicle crashes, race car aerodynamics, CFD for intake manifolds, airbag simulations, combustion modeling, side-door intrusion bars, and more. Applications featured in the UberCloud Compendium of Automotive Case Studies are:

• Vehicle Crash Using ANSYS LS-DYNA in the Opin Kerfi Cloud
• Aerodynamic Simulations using MantiumFlow and Advania Data Centers’ HPCFLOW
• Racing Car Airflow Simulation on the Advania Data Centers Cloud
• CFD Analysis of a V6 intake manifold using STAR-CCM+ in the Cloud
• Airbag simulation with ANSYS LS-DYNA in the Microsoft Azure Cloud
• Air flow through an engine intake manifold on Microsoft Azure
• Dynamic Study of Frontal Car Crash with UberCloud ANSYS Container in the Cloud
• Simulating Car Frontal Impact with LS-Dyna in the Cloud
• Advanced Combustion Modeling for Diesel Engines
• Optimization Study of Side Door Intrusion Bars

 Performance of an automotive crash simulation in the cloud

Each case study starts with introducing the project team, describes the application and how to move it to the cloud, analyzes benefits and challenges, and finally offers lessons learned and recommendations to our wider engineering community. If you find any of these case studies interesting, you can now download this Compendium for free!