Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing

The Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology (AutoCRC)

The Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology (AutoCRC) is a research collaboration aimed at delivering smarter, safer and cleaner manufacturing and vehicle technologies to Australia’s auto industry. The collaboration is part of a national strategy to secure Australia’s position in the global automotive industry and involves participation from eight of Australia’s leading vehicle and component manufacturers, two state governments and ten research institutions, including VPAC, with a total investment of $100m over seven years.

VPAC is playing a number of important roles in the AutoCRC, managing an off-site HPC cluster for the Research Centre and participating in two of the AutoCRC’s four Research Themes: Virtual Design and Manufacturing and Safety and Intelligent Vehicle Systems.

Managing the AutoCRC’s Supercomputing Capabilities

VPAC is managing an off-site HPC cluster for AutoCRC participants; a centralised HPC facility fully managed by VPAC and housed at the Holden Innovation centre in Port Melbourne. The off-site HPC cluster enables AutoCRC participants to conduct leading-edge computer simulations and design optimisations, including durability analysis, stress analysis, automated design optimisation and noise and vibration analysis on a large scale with increased fidelity when compared to the internal compute resources available at most participant facilities. As a result, the Australian auto industry will see benefits such as an increase in product and process innovation, reduced concept to product cycle time and increased safety, comfort and performance of vehicles. Furthermore, the use of advanced computing tools will increase the sustainability of the Australian automotive industry by reducing the environmental impact associated with conventional vehicle design and manufacturing processes (Learn more about the AutoCRC off-site managed HPC cluster).

VPAC is also participating in two of the AutoCRC’s four research themes, each designed to enable substantial change within the Australian automotive sector.

Research Theme: Virtual Design & Manufacturing

Australian vehicle manufacturing has relied on traditional processes to design, develop, validate and manufacture products. This has included the use of physical prototypes, resulting in typical development times of up to five years from concept to market. To capture niche opportunities, the industry must reduce this lead time to approximately one year. This paradigm shift can only be achieved using computer supported virtual design and engineering principles with modelling of products and processes.

Project: Virtual Integrated Design Environment

The outcome sought from this project is the support of a longer term vision to enable the automotive industry based enterprise to drive the integration and efficiency of the vehicle development process. Preliminary work will see the mapping of the conceptual framework for the vehicle development process, and capability and practice in Australia. Tested guidelines will be developed to assist engineers and virtual teams to engage with product information and enterprise capability. The final component of the project will develop requirements for Virtual Integrated Design Environments including requirements for product development based automation and integration frameworks.

Research Theme: Safety and Intelligent Vehicle Systems

This theme will focus its efforts on improving vehicle safety and injury prevention through pedestrian impact protection, far-side impact protection, human machine interface optimisation and child safety. In addition, the AutoCRC will investigate vehicle systems for improved performance and safety.

Project: Fully Embedded Telematics Demonstrator

The Fully Embedded Telematics Demonstrator Project follows the success of the internationally renowned "Australian Telematics Signature Vehicle". The project is to research and deliver a fully functional current production demonstrator vehicle with advanced telematics services, while complying with stringent human machine interface guidelines to minimise driver distraction.

Project: Standardised Approach for Emergency Vehicles (SAFE)

Emergency vehicles such as Police, Fire and Ambulance are increasingly using sophisticated technologies and equipment to improve their operational effectiveness. This equipment, however, is typically bolted-on to existing vehicles without considering the safety, power and device integration implications. The purpose of this project is to gain an understanding of the emergency driver user-interface and information and communications technology (ICT) requirement issues, and to develop a standard interface platform for addressing ergonomic design, ICT power requirements and safety. Learn more about the SAFE Vehicles Project.

Contact

For further information on the AutoCRC, visit www.autocrc.com or contact thomas@vpac.org.