Earnhardt Ganassi Racing Teams Up with Microsoft, MSC.Software and VI-grade to Speed up the Simulation of Race Vehicle Setups
15/01/2010
Marburg, January 15th, 2010 – VI-grade GmbH, the leading provider of best-in-class products and services to bridge the gap between real world testing and technical simulation, today announced that Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates has teamed with Microsoft, MSC.Software and VI-grade to speed up the simulation of race vehicle setups.
Earnhardt Ganassi Racing is a global leader in the motorsports industry, operating in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The team at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing has always been driven by their core values of Performance, Integrity, Innovation, and Partnership in everything they do. In order to improve the speed of their ADAMS + VI-SportsCar full vehicle simulations, Earnhardt Ganassi Racing is now using Microsoft’s Windows HPC Server 2008. As a result of the project, Earnhardt Ganassi Racing has demonstrated an order of magnitude improvement in DOE run time, to tie into the at-track experience, as well as an improvement in accuracy of 1-2 orders of magnitude and a general speed up of seven-post shaker rig simulations and of pre- and post processing tasks.
“We are known for our success in cultivating and maintaining mutually beneficial, long term partnerships with blue chip partners. Therefore, we are pleased to team up with Microsoft, MSC.Software and VI-grade,” said Steve Lauletta, President, at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. “We currently run 300 to 400 simulations to create the desired Design of Experiments surface fit model, so the entire process takes on the order of 10 to 12 hours. With this new solution, our simulation engineers have demonstrated an order-of-magnitude improvement in speed and accuracy of our simulations. This will enable us to explore more what-if scenarios with the same investment, obtaining more robust and accurate designs.”
“We are happy about the opportunity to work with Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates” says Patrick McNally, President, VI-grade LLC. “Built on the ADAMS/Car foundation, de-facto standard for full vehicle dynamics simulations, the VI-SportsCar solution is already used in NASCAR, the IndyCar Series, Formula One, and other racing leagues as a vehicle setup and simulation environment for race engineers. This implementation accelerates the modeling and simulation activities of the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing engineering team.”
According to the agreement, Windows HPC 2008 Server provides a fast computing environment for running multi-threaded applications and utilizing multiple processors for faster throughput. MSC Software provides the ADAMS and ADAMS/Car software through their global value-added reseller VI-grade. This represents the standard solution for full vehicle simulation, enabling a full DOE set of simulations over model variations and providing the results to make accurate race day predictions of performance. VI-grade provides the VI-SportsCar software as a plug-in to the ADAMS/Car environment for race vehicle setup and specialized racing simulations.
About Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates
Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates is a global leader in the motorsports industry operating in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The team is made up of talented team members, who are dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in racing and are based out of a state of the art facility in Concord, NC. Driven by performance, integrity, innovation, and partnership, the team has collected an impressive series of successes: in November 2008 two of auto racing’s biggest names – Earnhardt and Ganassi – launched a multi-car race team through the combination of the motorsports operations of Dale Earnhardt, Inc. and Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates (CGRFS). Combined, the new Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates now sports a history that includes six NASCAR championships, over 120 victories, 75 pole positions, over 200 top-fives and three Daytona 500 crowns. The new organization moved completely to Chevrolets and operates out of the former CGRFS building in Concord, NC. For further information about EGR please visit: http://www.earnhardtganassi.com
About MSC.Software Corporation
MSC.Software is a leading global provider of simulation software that helps companies make money, save time, and reduce costs associated with designing and testing manufactured products. MSC.Software works with thousands of companies in hundreds of industries to develop better products faster. MSC.Software employs approximately 1000 people around the world. For additional information about MSC.Software please visit www.mscsoftware.com. VI-grade GmbH, the leading provider of best-in-class products and services to bridge the gap between real world testing and technical simulation, today announced the 2010 edition of the Virtual Formula competition.