Modular, open source simulation approach: Application to design and analyze electric vehicles

The automotive development process is highly complex and is getting more diverse with increasing possibilities in modeling, computing and analyzing. Especially in the electric vehicle sector, an increasing number of simulation methods exist, dealing with areas like propulsion systems, power supply and thermal management. In order to combine the knowledge from those areas in one comprehensive model, this paper develops an approach for a modular, library-based system simulation. The aim is to create a defined workspace by specifying boundary conditions and introducing components for each part of the simulation. The core of the approach is the definition of the elements each component must contain and which interfaces they must include to facilitate complete system analyses. This paper suggests a standard for modular full vehicle simulations, when used as open source or free software. For the proof of concept, an essential part of the paper is a full vehicle model including a library with exchangeable components, which will be published as open source. For a plausibility check, the results are compared to pre-measured test data of a prototype electric vehicle.