The comprehensive digitalisation of production processes is progressing just as fast as the increasing electrification of powertrains in passenger cars and commercial vehicles. To explore the potential of powerful software for developing highly efficient electric drive trains, SKF and Romax Technology are hosting the first electric Driveline SIMulation (eDSIM) conference.

For decades, SKF and Romax Technology have been developing and implementing powerful software for product development and customer-specific innovation projects. Both SKF and Romax provide their customers with sophisticated simulation programs that reproduce the drive train - far beyond its individual components - as a complete system, thus taking all interactions into account.

SKF and Romax have long known that simulation-led design is key to delivering engineering systems that are fit for purpose and cost effective. These shared values of innovation, analysis of market demands and vision on process optimisation and electrified drivelines lay the foundation for “eDSIM”.

The “eDSIM” conference is a platform on which stakeholders, software providers, OEMs, suppliers and universities involved in the topic can exchange information on the numerical analysis of electrified drive trains. The aim of the interdisciplinary exchange is to master the current challenges in the development of practical and cost-effective drive systems as efficiently as “integrated”.

These challenges include, for example, numerous parameters from various areas of physics: structural, dynamic, thermal, fluid mechanics, tribological and electromagnetic aspects need to be considered. Such factors influence the overall performance of the system by their interactions.

To enable an electric drive system to “outperform” the more than centennial development lead of combustion-based drives, new CAE tools must optimally coordinate all these variables. After all, the ultimate goal is to design an applicable solution in the desired quality within an adequate period of time, which proves to be as energy-efficient as possible in practice.

Apart from their significance for simulation software, data are also playing an increasingly important role in “Industry 4.0 production.” As digitalisation progresses, design data is increasingly being incorporated into automated manufacturing processes as the starting point for product life cycle management. The eDSIM conference will also discuss how development processes - especially between development partners, customers and suppliers - can be designed to maximize productivity, shorten development times, increase added value and drive technological innovations further forward.