As we scoured around looking for the latest line up of Nissans for 2019, a quick look up for car dealerships near me revealed the availability of vehicles like the Pathfinder, Murano, and the Nismo lineup of GT-R, 37OZ Roadster and the Sentra, all of which exemplify Nissans expert engineering and use of groundbreaking technology to bring out vehicles with powerful performance and persona. Many of Nissan’s cars lined up for 2019 are inspired from the road rallies and race tracks where cars are put to the ultimate tests for endurance, performance and safety. Nissan uses many of these learnings from the field and inputs the data in to the most advanced and sophisticated simulators to observe, record, understand and derive the most optimal and innovative solutions. These solutions help address issues, improve performance, increase comfort and safety, get better fuel economy, provide better response and put more power and control into the hands of the drivers. We decided to drill deeper and understand why simulation-based engineering is adopted in modern automotive industry.
What is Simulation in Automotive Engineering
Computer based modeling and simulation is already widely in use in industries and manufacturing sector. Simulation helps us replicate real world situations and events using software modelling, measure the responses based on scientific principles and understand the effect these events may have on the surrounding environment. Simulation gives us the necessary advantage to repeatedly run the processes, provide variable inputs and study the simulated responses in detail till we get a clear understanding of what’s going on. This might not be feasible in real world situations. In Automotive Engineering, computer software simulations have wide range of applications from designing, streamlining processes, understanding ergonomics, and testing safety to name some areas. If you are looking at examples for practical application of simulation in automotive engineering, motion control and vehicle dynamics is one such area.
Benefits of Simulations in Engineering
These solutions help address issues, improve performance, increase comfort and safety, get better fuel economy, provide better response and put more power and control into the hands of the drivers. If not for the advantage of having software-based simulation, car makers would go bankrupt in just testing the crashworthiness of their cars and every vehicle on the production line would need to be compromised. In fact, simulation helps automakers in their decision-making process right from the design states of the vehicle itself.
NISMO from Nissan
One of the best examples that can be presented is the use of simulative engineering in development of Nissan cars that have adopted technologies inspired from motorsports to provide similar efficiency, performance and similar experiences. One has to see and experience the Nissans like the GT-R, Sentra and 370Z which can be found by querying Nissan car dealers near me. The superb aerodynamics that we see in the Nissan 370z Coupe can be attributed to years of study of how airflow effects speed and mileage and its use is visible in how Nissans engineers managed to retain the vehicles stability and minimize drag coefficient at the same time.