Crashing in cyberspace - evaluating structural behaviour of car bodies in a virtual environment

The use of virtual prototypes generated from engineering simulations can be crucial to the efficient development of innovative products. Performance predictions and functional evaluations of a design are possible long before results of real prototype tests are available. With the rise in model complexity, data quantity, computing performance and accuracy, we increasingly find ourselves lacking the tools, methods and metaphors to deal with the information that is being generated. Here we present new results of on-going research at the University of Erlangen and BMW in the development of a virtual environment for car-body engineering applications as illustrated by examples from acoustics, vibration and impact dynamics.