2013 News - 16 December

Ferrari successfully completes the installation of DiM (Driver in Motion)

Marburg, Dec 16th, 2013 – VI-grade, the leading provider of best-in-class software products and services for advanced applications in the field of system-level simulation, today announced that Ferrari completed the installation of the revolutionary motion platform named DiM (Driver in Motion) designed by VI-grade and engineered and manufactured by Saginomiya. In detail, the new dynamic platform for the driving simulator has been successfully installed at the Ferrari Gestione Industriale site in Maranello, Italy and will from now on be used for developing, testing and optimizing new vehicle models, according to the new trend in the automotive industry, allowed by the accuracy and efficiency of Real Time simulation solutions provided by VI-grade.

“The installation of DiM has been successfully completed in full respect of our original plans. The system completely meets our specifications and expectations and represents the perfect complement to our existing engineering process”, said Marco Fainello, Head of the Car Performance Simulation at Ferrari. “Leveraging the experience developed with Formula 1, we will be using from now on the driving simulator for road car development to optimize traditional passive performance with including active system electronics, with the purpose to anticipate driver comments much before the real prototype is built”.

“We are extremely happy to report the completion of this very important activity at Ferrari with our Dynamic Driving Simulator”, said Guido Bairati, Sales Director, VI-grade. “We are looking forward to a continuous and successful usage of DiM at Ferrari, helping the company to improve their excellent cars even further and in shorter time, while providing us with precious feedback to further improve our driving simulation solution.”

The driving simulator is based on the usage of VI-CarRealTime, VI-grade’s flagship solution for real-time vehicle dynamics simulation. The vehicle model is used to calculate the real-time response to the driver’s inputs; the vehicle motions are processed and transformed into feasible platform motions by VI-MotionCueing; actuator movement is eventually calculated on the fly by platform controller.

About Saginomiya

Saginomiya is the leading provider of automatic controls and test systems in Japan as and is very highly reputed throughout the world for the quality of its products. Saginomiya started developing, manufacturing and selling test systems in 1964, expanding in several business fields such as civil engineering and construction, industrial machinery, railway services, power generation, aviation and automotive. Saginomiya’s “Dynamic Servo” has been developed as the ideal test systems utilizing state-of-the-art core technologies such as electric and hydraulic hybrids as well as a next-generation simulator. Saginomiya is are highly committed to serve the needs of the most technically advanced customers in the global market. For further information, click here.

2013 News - 28 November

VI-grade supplies software solutions for masters in railway systems at Universidad Comillas

Marburg, Nov 28th, 2013 – VI-grade, the leading provider of best-in-class products and services to bridge the gap between real world testing and technical simulation, today announced that Universidad Pontificia Comillas ICAI-ICADE, a leading European University located in Madrid, has selected the VI-grade suite of railway related solutions based on VI-Rail as strategic tool for its Railway Systems Master initiative.

The Master course is designed for engineers and science graduates wishing to work in the railway sector, as well as for working professionals from the sector who wish to enhance their training. In order to keep up with the various areas covered, students are advised to devote plenty of time and effort to the modules, if they study the full program: however, class schedules are compatible with a reasonably demanding work schedule.

“We are excited about the technology offered by VI-grade for the railway industry,” says Antonio Fernández, Director of the Masters initiative. “Talgo, one of the main industry partners of our initiative, will contribute with their knowledge in this area, sharing its yearly experience with VI-Rail as simulation tool for their development activities.”

“Railway industry represents a strategic market for Spain,” says Mikel Garbizu, Analysis y Simulacion. “Masters like this one at Comillas ICAI leverage very well trained engineers to the industry. We are looking forward to supporting this important course with our skills and competences in simulation software and services for the railway industry.”

“We are happy to report another very interesting initiative of our company in the railway industry,” says Guido Bairati, Sales Director, VI-grade. “We are looking forward the rich suite of commercial partners of the initiative providing our VI-Rail solution as tool to teach students how to efficiently perform accurate system-level general dynamics analysis for railway systems.”

About VI-Rail

VI-Rail is the specialized railway simulation software from VI-grade. VI-Rail enables to quickly build a complete, parameterized model of a new railway vehicle, easily define its suspension, wheelset, wheel-rail contact and other vital characteristics. Running through a battery of simulations, it is possible to determine the vehicle’s stability, derailment safety clearance, track load, passenger comfort, and more. The performance of a railway vehicle design can be optimized virtually in the computer, before cutting a single piece of metal or running a single physical test. VI-Rail users can instantly see the effects of design changes on railcar performance in high-speed animation, easily detecting component interferences, excessive wear, instability, and performance limitations. Users can also plot key parameters in graphs to compare results from different designs. For additional information, click here.

About Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Comillas is a University of the Church, run for over a century by the Society of Jesus, the private entity that has the largest number of universities under its care in the world. As part of our university mission, the university has always successfully combined an educational experience based on tradition and the continuous updating demanded by social change. Today more than ever, due to the difficult economical circumstances, it is essential to have good communication between a university and society: this is why Comillas is constantly and closely working alongside business, professional and social organizations. For additional information, click here.

About Analysis Y Simulacion

Analisis y Simulacion is an R&D Engineering company, which delivers engineering solutions in the Virtual Product Development field across Spain. The expertise acquired over the years has become a valuable asset, and gained the recognition of the customers. The company has consolidated its presence and growth over the years reaching 73 people in this field. Analisis y Simulacion offers expertise to correlate the world of numerical simulation and the physical testing environment with the most advanced engineering tools: Instrumentation, Data Acquisition, Testing and Simulation Software. For additional information, click here.

2013 News - 23 September

Škoda Transportation selects VI-grade railway solutions

Marburg, Sept 23rd, 2013 – VI-grade, the leading provider of best-in-class products and services to bridge the gap between real world testing and technical simulation, today announced that ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION, a professional manufacturer of various kinds of passenger coaches located in Plzen, Czech Republic, selected the VI-grade suite of railway solutions, based on VI-Rail.

The company, that produces streetcars, electric locomotives, electric multiple units and rapid transit train systems, will use VI-Rail, and in particular the newly released VI-Rail Wear toolkit, to simulate and optimize the performance of tramcars, EMUs, locomotives and metro, with particular attention to the possibility of reducing the occurrence of wheel wear.

“We are excited about the technology offered by VI-grade for the railway industry,” says Václav Kraus, Ph.D. - Senior research engineer, ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION a.s. “Our company, a professional railway vehicle manufacturer, will use the VI-Rail solution to identify the best suspension and wheel profile settings in order to lead to increase of mileage of wheel until the necessity of re-profiling.”

“We are very happy to report another important commercial success in the European railway industry,” says Guido Bairati, Sales Director, VI-grade. “This demonstrates the efficiency of our development strategies, aimed to provide to new and existing customers a suite of solutions aligned with their most advanced engineering needs. We are looking forward to a continuous a fruitful collaboration with Škoda!”

About VI-Rail

VI-Rail is the specialized railway simulation software from VI-Grade. VI-Rail enables to quickly build a complete, parameterized model of a new railway vehicle, easily define its suspension, wheelset, wheel-rail contact, and other vital characteristics. Running through a battery of simulations it is possible to determine the vehicle’s stability, derailment safety clearance, track load, passenger comfort, and more. The performance of a railway vehicle design can be optimized virtually in the computer, before cutting a single piece of metal or running a single physical test. VI-Rail users can instantly see the effects of design changes on railcar performance in high-speed animation, easily detecting component interferences, excessive wear, instability, and performance limitations. Users can also plot key parameters in graphs to compare results from different designs. For additional information, please visit www.vi-grade.com/index.php?pagid=rail.

About Skoda Transportation

ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION is a traditional Czech company engaged in the field of transport engineering, with a strong position in both domestic and world markets. Establishment of ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION is connected with the specialization restructuring and financial restructuring of the company resulting in acquisition of a strategic owner. ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION and its subsidiaries are focused on the transport engineering industry, its key products include low-floor trams, electric locomotives, subway trains, suburban train units and trolleybuses, as well as traction motors or complete driving gears for transport systems. The ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION group of companies has more than four thousand employees. Škoda experts develop, produce and supply top products customized to the needs and wishes of its customers. Successful investments in new product lines are, along with sales ensured for the long term and the company’s financial stability, proof that ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION ranks among the top European companies in its industry. For additional information, please visit: http://www.skoda.cz.

2013 News - 6 March

Ferrari adopts revolutionary driving simulation technology from VI-grade

Marburg, Mar 6th, 2013 – VI-grade GmbH, the leading provider of best-in-class software products and services for advanced applications in the field of system-level simulation, today announced that Ferrari selected the newly developed motion platform named DiM (Driver in Motion). The new dynamic platform for the driving simulator will be installed later this year at the Ferrari Gestione Industriale site in Maranello, Italy and will be used for testing and optimizing the setup of the GT vehicles developed and marketed by Ferrari.

Leveraging the experience developed with Formula 1, Ferrari will be using the driving simulator for GT and road car development to optimize performance, system integration and driver feeling.

The 9 degrees-of-freedom, newly developed DiM platform has been designed in order to take full advantage of VI-MotionCueing, a very innovative motion cueing strategy developed by VI-grade in collaboration with the University of Padua, Italy and consists of a small-size hexapod mounted on top of a planar frame moving on a very smooth sliding surface by means of an efficient and innovative system based on air pads and magnetic pads. The hexapod has been designed to produce consistent pitch and roll rotations and Z translations, as well as small X and Y translations and Yaw rotation. The consistent X, Y and Yaw movements required to generate the feeling of vehicle accelerations on the driver are instead generated by the base tripod. VI-MotionCueing harmonizes the system motion extending the motion envelope and separating low and high frequency contributions, which makes this type of motion platform suitable for both vehicle dynamics and ride studies.

The driving simulator is based on the usage of VI-CarRealTime, VI-grade’s flagship solution for real-time vehicle dynamics simulation. The vehicle model is used to calculate the real-time response to the driver’s input that is provided to VI-MotionCueing, that in turn produces the inputs to the inverse kinematic program which controls the actuators.

“The DiM solution completely meets our specifications and expectations for a system that represents the perfect complement to our existing engineering process”, said Marco Fainello, Head of the Car Performance Simulation at Ferrari. “We rely on VI-grade software solutions for our automotive system simulations since several years and we are looking forward to realizing the maximum benefits out of the high-resolution simulated motion control capabilities provided by DiM. We are also convinced that the revolutionary 9 degrees-of-freedom motion platform from Saginomiya will allow us to reach the target to improve the tools to optimize both handling and ride of the cars we are developing.”

“Motion platforms architectures for driving simulators have been undergoing a very creative development phase in recent years” said Diego Minen, Technical Director, VI-grade. “The new VI-grade conceptual idea and the platform final design provided by Saginomiya was chosen by Ferrari in place of competitive solutions because its kinematics has shown to be ideal for low/high motion frequencies separation and extremely efficient for implementing our new motion cueing strategy, which has been fine tuned with the help of professional driver’s in our and other simulation centers over the past two years. The combination of DiM mechanical architecture and performance, VI-CarRealTime and VI-MotionCueing characteristics is certainly unique to obtain the best driver motion perception”.

“Since the beginning of our activities, back in 1964, we developed, manufactured and sold different types of test systems and we have established our presence in many different industry sectors such as machinery, railway, aerospace, nuclear power, energy and, above all, automotive” said Akiko Watanobe, Public Relations & Advertisement Section at Saginomiya. “Thanks to our history and our experience, we are now favorably reputed with high reliability in many fields as a comprehensive test system maker worldwide using our core hydraulic and electric technology in our Dynamic Servo product line. This strong background made us becoming the best reliable partner to engineer, manufacture and support a new concept of motion platform such as DiM. We are highly committed to serve the needs of the most technically advanced customers in global market and we are delighted to work with Ferrari and VI-grade in developing such a revolutionary motion platform for driving simulators.”

“We are extremely happy to report this very important commercial success at Ferrari with our VI-DriveSim Dynamic solution”, said Guido Bairati, Sales Director, VI-grade. “Thanks to its expertise in design and production of worldwide known GT cars, Ferrari represents for us the ideal reference for the deployment and the further development of our driving simulation technologies.”About Saginomiya

2013 News - 27 February

Fiat Do Brasil (Fiasa) adopts VI-grade's STATIC Simulator

Marburg, Feb. 27th, 2013 – VI-grade, the leading provider of best-in-class software products and services for advanced applications in the field of system level simulation, today announced that fiat do Brasil, the Brazilian division of Fiat Group Automobiles, installed VI-DriveSim Static, the breakthrough driving simulator technology developed by VI-grade, at their premises in Belo Horizonte, Brasil. The driving simulator will be used for vehicle set up optimization on different digital versions of existing tracks.

“We are impressed with the technology offered by the STATIC Simulator. We believe that the driving simulator is an important tool for vehicle dynamic developments, improving the ride characteristics and reducing the development time. The possibility of starting the vehicle setup using a real driver before the prototypes is a great opportunity,” said Vinicius Leal, Fiat Automóveis S.A. Engenharia do Produto - Chassi - Cálculo e Simulações Virtuais. “In detail, we will use the solution to test and optimize vehicle dynamics on a digitalized test track provided by VI-grade and in the future our plans is to scan further test tracks in order to be able to virtually test the behavior of our cars in different setups. This kind of high fidelity solution using hardware in the loop in a dynamic simulator is ideal to use as a development tool for our dynamic engineers.”

“Automotive transportation represents a strategic market in our country and we are happy that an important reference such as Fiat do Brasil has selected Multicorpos as strategic partner for the implementation of a virtual prototyping process based on VI-grade's driving simulators,” said Alvaro Costa Neto, Managing Director, Multicorpos Engenharia. “We are looking forward to supporting the local branch of Fiat Group Automobiles in getting the most advantage out of this exciting simulation solution.”

“We are extremely happy to report the first successful installation of our STATIC Simulator in South America”, said Guido Bairati, Sales Director, VI-grade. “This demonstrates the efficiency of our commercial strategies in the Americas region, that relies on a network of experienced and respected resellers. We are looking forward to a continuous a fruitful collaboration in Brazil!”

STATIC Simulator

The STATIC Simulator by VI-grade is a professional solution that allows OEMs, Tier1 suppliers and Research Institutes to use driving simulator to start bridging the gap between physical testing and simulation. Our STATIC simulator is based on the same VI-DriveSim software package that is used on COMPACT Simulator and on DiM, but is also fully compatible with 3rd party software solutions. This makes it possible to upgrade the static simulator to a dynamic simulator later on, leveraging previous investments.

HMI, Vehicle Dynamics, NVH and ADAS are some of the disciplines that could be developed using a STATIC Simulator by VI-grade. Cylindrical screen and professional projectors make it possible to reach very high level of realism and to give driver an immersive driver experience.

Thanks to the real-time hardware infrastructure, static simulator is also suitable for software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop applications.

Accessory technologies like VI-BioTelemetry, VI-ActiveSeat and VI-ActiveBelts are also fully compatible with Static Simulator.

About Multicorpos

Multicorpos is an exclusive software reseller for CAE analyses in Latin America for the most prestigious companies in these fields, such as MSC Software for structural and dynamic analyses, FEV for virtual engine simulation and VI-grade for specialized system-level simulation solutions. Multicorpos also includes a dedicated service team able to perform advanced dynamic analyses using the computational tool for Multibody Systems by means of MSC.ADAMS. The team also owns expertise in structural analyses using the technique of finite elements simulation as well as in the analysis of fluid systems using computational techniques (CFD). Located in the high tech district of São Carlos, Multicorpos provides counseling support in the business area and relies on qualified human resources through a close relationship with two of the most important universities (UFSCar and USP)