Testing and facilities

This facility is fully equipped to handle all performance engineering attributes, such as noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), comfort, durability and multi-attribute balancing. This performance engineering facility contains:

• A two-wheel chassis dynamometer (dyno) in a large semi-anechoic room that accommodates cars, trucks, buses, off-highway vehicles and motorcycles
• A full range of in-house structural test labs and semi-anechoic chambers equipped with multiple multichannel mobile and laboratory testing and analysis systems
• Access to anechoic and reverberant rooms and transmission loss chamber
• Access to shaker test platform in a climatic room for full-size car bodies and vans
• Tire and suspension NVH test rigs (structural and operational testing)
• Brake NVH test rig
• Component fatigue testing
• Access to engine and gearbox NVH/durability test benches
• Exhaust durability test setup, including gas burner up to 1,100 Celsius
• Hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) testing lab
• System simulation platform linked with a real-time target testing controller and system performance

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At this facility, Simcenter Engineering and Consulting Services experts apply an all-in-one approach to balance and optimize for seemingly conflicting fuel economy and drivability requirements. The testing facility includes:

• An all-wheel drive spindle coupled with a vehicle energy management (VEM) test rig in a climate chamber operated by an advanced driving robot
• Driveline test rigs for balancing fuel economy and drivability
• Component test rigs to map system performance
• Hybrid and traditional HiL testing for controls verification and validation

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Accurate data, fast results and controlled development costs are essential aims in crash testing vehicles, components and safety systems.

Our safety center in Helmond, the Netherlands, is an independent EN ISO/IEC 17025 accredited testing laboratory that supports the global automotive industry in the creation of safer and smarter vehicles. Our crash and safety facility is known for its unique state-of-the-art testing and certification facilities and services. Our testing center offers safety components and systems tests for helmets, seat belts, child restraint systems and complete restraint systems. In addition to development testing, we perform the final and independent verification of your product’s compliance against worldwide standards.

We offer fully equipped facilities to perform tests on various automotive applications, such as Active Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) development tests, passive safety tests on passenger cars, Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) testing for trucks and buses to a gross weight of 22 tons and testing according to NCAP protocols. Even aviation seats and interior tests are performed at our indoor test facility.

Read more about passive safety testing
Read more about active safety testing

Tire testing

Tires are crucial for the safety, comfort and consumption of vehicles. As a result, tire testing is a significant undertaking. We offer a state-of-the-art test facility right where it belongs: the road.

Our team has extensive knowledge of testing tires using a unique, in-house built driving laboratory, measuring tire performance on any road surface and in almost any condition. The test trailer measures the forces and moments that arise when placing a tire on the road in various situations. By default, two towers are mounted. On one side there is a car tire measurement setup; on the other side is a motorcycle tire measurement setup, with the possibility to measure tires at camber angles up to 70 degrees.

Tire measurements with our tire test trailer are usually performed at commercial proving grounds in Germany or Spain. However, these measurements can be conducted at any private or public test track. We can facilitate measuring tires at an indoor facility of the customer’s choice.

We deliver measurement data in a standardized format (TYDEX). In addition to gathering the input for our tire fitting tool and subsequently our tire models, the measurement facilities are also used for validation and benchmarking studies.

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In response to the main market drivers – energy efficiency, safety and performance – many products now include controllers and electronic components that help optimize the product performance or refine their brand character. The widespread use of advanced control systems increases the complexity of product development, simulation and testing.

To accelerate system testing at any development stage of the model-based development process, Simcenter extends its portfolio with model-based testing capabilities. By integrating tests and simulations in a single environment to validate product performance, testing costs and risks can be reduced, productivity increased and extra system insight gained. Model-based testing maximizes the consistency of used tools and methods while providing a highly agile mechatronic system engineering environment. It also enables attribute-specific evaluation using virtual models, combined virtual-physical models and physical prototypes.

Simcenter Engineering and Consulting Services helps customers build intelligent test rigs and simulation models at the desired fidelity. We then help you combine test devices with models and ensure the two run in real time. Our team enables you to build these systems to your exact specifications so you can predict product performance with the highest accuracy possible.

Headquartered in New York with additional locations around the world, our computational fluid dynamics (CFD) team is composed of over 60 subject matter experts who bring their highly specialized skillset and industry knowledge to optimize your product design and help you deploy the latest simulation methods. This team works to extend or complement your current simulation capabilities to help you bring products to market faster, at lower cost and with fewer physical prototypes using Simcenter CFD software.

Depending on the maturity of your simulation program, our CFD experts can also work closely with you to develop fully automated workflows that meet your quality standards and make complex CFD simulations accessible to all users, regardless of expertise. Our team also acts as an additional resource during peak workload periods, serving as a dedicated external resource with expertise in a broad range of applications and industries.

In addition to a team of experts, our CFD group also offers centralized high-performance computation centers:

• 15,000 cores in Wilsonville, Ohio
• 20,000 cores in Shannon, Ireland
• 5,000 cores in Osaka, Japan
• 5,000 cores in Seoul, South Korea
• 5,000 cores in Shanghai, China
• 5,000 cores in Pune, India

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At this vehicle center, visitors experience a complete overview of AV/EV development, from vehicle design to manufacturing and integrated simulation and testing solutions. They can see how a comprehensive digital twin will transform the future of engineering innovation and free engineers from the constraints of today to build the products of tomorrow. Simcenter forms the basis of all these setups. Simcenter Engineering and Consulting Services operates six demonstrators and test labs:

• Autonomous driver assistance systems (ADAS) – Validates the ADAS algorithms delivering safe and tested products to the customer and the roads.  
• Vehicle energy management – Captures the global energy distribution and meets range, drivability and performance expectations.  
• Battery simulation – Allows battery pack sizing in early-stage design using high-fidelity analysis tools while evaluating realistic drive cycles.  
• Battery management system – Monitors the battery pack’s temperature, state-of-health and charge level, ensuring optimal performance while keeping the pack in safe operating condition.  
• Multi-attribute balancing – Balances and optimizes seemingly conflicting performance requirements of individual attributes.  
• Digital twin e-driveline – Studies the performance of key e-driveline components such as battery pack, e-motor, transmission and inverter.  

Simcenter Engineering and Consulting Services experts helps bring the technology directly to the automotive industry. The multiple disciplines offer real-world examples that you can immediately deploy in your own development projects.

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