Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing

The automotive industry is aggressively moving from physical prototyping to virtual prototyping to reduce time-to-market, lower development costs, and to support innovation and sustainability. Simulation technology in key disciplines such as vehicle crash worthiness, noise and vibration, and fluid mechanics has matured to a high level.

To further this technology, VPAC developed a GPU-based algorithm (shader) that achieves a high frame rate while also interactively and immersively visualising production-scale crash simulations, an important tool in developing safer vehicles for passengers and other road users.

The development of the visualisation algorithm is part of a broader effort at VPAC to develop a Virtual Integrated Design Environment (VIDE) and is a key component of the Information Engagement Environment (IEE), a next-generation engineering work space being developed by VPAC in collaboration with the automotive industry. The field of human–computer interaction and, specifically, interactive visualisation is a key focus of this major development. The objective is to develop an activity-based interface that maximises the bandwidth of information flow between the information environment and the human engineer.

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