Efficient Collaborative Modelling and Simulation with Application to Wheel Loader Design

Abstract Technical systems are becoming increasingly integrated, partly because of the intensive use of software due to demands for energy efficiency, performance and customizability. This leads to complicated interactions among the subsystems during operation. The dynamic behaviour of such a system is hard to predict since every sub-system needs to be taken into account. Also, the sub-systems often differ in characteristics between engineering domains, and engineers therefore need to collaborate to make the prediction. A validated model is needed to predict how a change to a system will affect its behaviour. The paper investigates how the modelling, simulation and validation processes can be organized in the described case where several engineers from different disciplines are involved. The application studied is a wheel loader that is complex and represents a large family of machines. In the resulting approach, teams of engineers from the different disciplines create one general-purpose model, each team using the most appropriate modelling environment. The system simulation is realized through coupled simulation, where accurate results are achieved by connecting the simulation environments by so-called bilateral delay lines.