ESI Group announced the release of Virtual Performance Solution. Delivering faster results in crash simulation, the new version also offers new approaches for modeling product assembly, for assessing Noise, Vibration & Harshness (NVH), and for predicting airbag opening behavior more accurately. Virtual Performance Solution brings industrial clients a decisive competitive advantage, especially when facing the numerous challenges brought by lightweight engineering and the consequent need for numerous design iterations, trade-offs between performance domains, and less conservative safety margins.

Virtual Performance Solution provides automotive manufacturers with a viable solution to improve passenger safety without slowing down new car developments. As exemplified by the Vehicle Safety Simulation department at Audi, real prototypes can be drastically reduced or eliminated completely. Virtual Performance Solution has been developed to greatly facilitate and accelerate multi-domain optimization and to offer manufacturing companies in all industries the capacity to test and improve their future products.

Depending on the industry, domains of application may include structural stiffness and strength, crash, occupant safety, NVH & interior acoustics, comfort, durability, and high velocity impact. Virtual Performance Solution offers a new approach for modeling adhesive bonding by introducing special 3D connection elements. These enable a more precise modeling of assembled parts so engineers can more accurately predict behavior in all performance domains, including crash, NVH, stiffness and strength.

The release includes an enhanced Finite Pointset Method (FPM) module including turbulence models for gas flow. The module enables increased precision in the simulation of even the most complex airbag systems, notably curtain airbags. Virtual Performance Solution also comes with improvements for NVH assessment.

A new method to evaluate Random Response enables vehicle engineers to achieve a more consistent vehicle by providing more precise prediction of how different road loads and other conditions influence the performance of parts or products. Furthermore, a new scheme for non-linear transient implicit calculations is added to improve the accuracy of durability and strength predictions.