PROVIDING BAC LTD VIRTUAL ENGINEERING EXPERTISE “ON DEMAND” Creating easy to use, remote access virtual engineering processes for BAC Ltd to enhance and steer rapid virtual testing of vehicle components, making use of the VEC Engineering Cloud. A novel technology solution developed by the Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC), accessible through the VEC “expert on demand” Engineering Cloud web portal, was deployed to support the evaluation and understanding of vehicle attributes for BAC Ltd and enhance their vehicle development programme. THE CHALLENGE Liverpool based, niche vehicle manufacturer Briggs Automotive Company Ltd (BAC), developer of the road legal single seat supercar MONO, wanted to increase its flexibility and accessibility to CAE expertise, sophisticated software and computing resources in order to evolve vehicle’s attributes and gain a competitive market edge. The aim was to enable BAC to access “on demand” virtual testing processes helping them to accelerate the adoption of new components and designs. THE SOLUTION The VEC developed an advanced and modularized workflow for assessing the bending and torsional stiffness of the MONO chassis. Using the VEC Engineering Cloud, different variants of the chassis were created and set-up for structural analysis through single runs or design explorations, taking into account suggestions from CAD engineers as well as material specifications from the chassis supplier. The submission of Finite Element Analyses (FEA) to High Performance Computing facilities was a user-friendly “one-click” process. The powerful FE solver DYNAMIS from DTECH was used, providing various result representations, including format for VR environments, enabling the interpretation of the results in 1:1 scale. Remote virtual engineering testing was enabled through the extensive and seamless access to the HPC facilities of the Hartree Centre at the STFC, Daresbury Laboratory. THE BENEFITS The VEC provided BAC with a platform for collaboration throughout their supply chain and enabled them to co-design Engineering Services tailored to their needs using multi- disciplinary expertise, high fidelity virtual prototypes and advanced workflows. This access to “expertise on demand” reduces design ‘bottlenecks’ and enables organisations such as BAC greater flexibility and speed to innovate their products. The VEC Engineering Cloud provides easy-to-use, non-expert access to HPC accessible from any internet enabled computer/tablet or laptop and common access to software “on demand”, providing readily accessible resources beyond the existing capacity of an organisation. WORK WITH US The Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) delivers innovative solutions to industry through the exploitation of academic research and the latest scientific and technology infrastructure. Enhancing capability through Virtual Innovation, the VEC is the UK’s leading centre of Virtual Engineering technology integration for industrial and commercial applications. A collaboration between the University of Liverpool and the Hartree Centre, Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Daresbury Laboratory, the VEC delivers advanced modelling, simulation and visualisation solutions and ease of access to the UK’s most powerful supercomputing facilities to enable business growth and competitiveness. For more information about how your organisation could benefit from working with the Virtual Engineering Centre: +44 (0)1925 864853 virtualengineeringcentre.com