The wheels of globalization are turning
And it seems all this timely hard work is starting to pay off. Ford is finding that they are in the right place at the right time in markets around the globe. One of the biggest changes implemented internally at Ford was a global engineering organization from the vehicle as well as the engine side. The same goes for powertrain. The Ford powertrain community already was operating globally for direct-to-vehicle-line engines and transmissions, but the ‘as installed group’ was very regional.
“The ‘as installed group’ where various LMS tools are used to solve key NVH issues is very vehicle-specific. To have global platforms and one signature DNA across all Ford vehicles, we had to go global. Today, we are working towards the same output on all our vehicles whether it is powertrain sound quality, brake feel or handling. We are going to be able to talk one language across all of our vehicles at any point in time,” explained Barb Samardzich, Vice President, Global Powertrain Engineering at Ford.
One-step ahead of the global demand for green
This new global strategy gave Ford the agility they needed. With gas prices soaring, consumers started demanding fuel-efficient cars and Ford was ready.
“Overnight, it was like a light switch. Gas hit $3.50 a gallon and suddenly truck sales were way down, big SUVs were way down. Fortunately, we had the right type of smaller car products coming in from Europe; we were really in good shape in terms of our product development time line and having the foresight to “The customer is driving the green revolution. Customers are asking for more green cars. We want to manage our business by being ahead of the curve.” Barb Samardzich, Vice President, Global Powertrain Engineering at Ford recognize the shift that was coming. Certainly it came faster than anticipated,” commented Barb Samardzich.
The advent of the EcoBoost
A major contributor to this “green” success is Ford’s new EcoBoost engine technology strategy. A gasoline turbocharged direct-injection technology, EcoBoost promises up to 20 percent better fuel economy, 15 percent less CO2 emissions and better driving performance than larger-displacement engines. By 2012, Ford will have EcoBoost on more than 80 percent of its North American line-up. A cleaner and more fuel-efficient Duratorq diesel engine is a big part of the European strategy as well. In the US market, EcoBoost V6 engines will be found on Ford’s 2010 Lincoln MKS and the stylish Ford Flex crossover. Fourcylinder EcoBoost engines will debut in 2010 in both North America and Europe.
The NVH challenges of EcoBoost
Like other OEMs, Ford has realized that consumers want small fuel-efficient cars that are still – honestly speaking – cars. Ford thinks they have the answer with turbo-charged, high-torque EcoBoost technology. Clearly, it is a win-win for consumers: fuel efficiency without compromising on drivability. But this technology switch meant that Dr. Abe, a Henry Ford Technical Fellow, NVH, and his team at Ford’s Advanced Engineering
Center had to solve a whole box of new NVH challenges.
“Dr. Abe will be first to tell you that a naturally aspirated engine is easier to tune for sound quality – you know
turbo-charged engines have very different noise characteristics. We had a lot of NVH challenges with the turbocharged EcoBoost engines. We needed to make sure that we deliver a refined powertrain sound and - at the same time - a powerful sound so the customer is confident in the engine,” added Barb Samardzich.
Throwing out old NVH tricks
Traditionally, a NVH department would rely on heavier materials for sound insulation or to control vibration, but
fuel efficiency and lighter cars are such brand drivers at the moment that NVH engineers are being forced to find new ways to replace these traditional tricks of the trade.
“NVH engineers used to have a general rule of thumb: the heavier the better. Today, we have to graduate
from relying on heavy sound insulation materials and use lighter materials for vibration damping, sound insulation and absorption. We need to realize good NVH with lighter, more efficient and environmentally friendly hardware,”
stated Dr. Abe. “And with the new EcoBoost engines, the sound should reflect a powerful engine performance, yet be refined and attractive enough to customers accustomed to the sound of the engines being replaced, like the V8.”
The 98g CO2 Ford Fiesta for the world
Although consumers are demanding fuelefficient cars, they also want ‘cleaner’ cars that release less CO2 and NO2. Hybrids like the Toyota Prius (104g/km CO2) and urban mini-cars like the Smart (88g/km CO2) are already on the radar of most eco-minded consumers.
“The customer is driving the green revolution. Customers are asking for more green cars. We want to manage our business by being ahead of the curve. This is why it was very important for Ford to get below the 100g CO2 level,” said Barb Samardzich.
Since August, Ford’s eco-friendly Ford Fiesta with its 98g/km output has been rolling off the line at the Cologne,
Germany plant. The Ford Fiesta is the first truly global car for Ford with production start-ups in January 2009 in
Valencia, Spain. The Ford Fiesta will also be manufactured in China, Thailand and Mexico.
Too much hybrid hype?
With high-profile marketing campaigns from Toyota and Lexus, many environmentally concerned consumers are now seriously switching gears to a hybrid mentality. Ford was the first on the market with a SUV hybrid – its Ford Escape in 2005 -- and the company has promised to double hybrid production with the introduction of hybrid versions of the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan next year. But many people are beginning to ponder if buying a hybrid car is green enough?
Hybrid powertrains clearly can answer some of the tough environmental challenges like improved fuel efficiency and lower emissions, but experts are quick to point out that the technology still has a long way to go before it reaches maturity.
“One of the major NVH challenges of hybrid vehicles is a seamless transition between engine-driven and motor-driven modes for both noise and vibration. Another challenge is the very low noise level in the motor-driven mode due to the nonexistence of engine noise, which is a significant masker of other noises. This means a very different sound balance for the powertrain noise, road noise and aerodynamic noise,” explained Dr. Abe.
And the green car of the future?
Most automotive experts are on the same page: hybrids are not the only green idea under discussion at the moment. Ford is working to develop a portfolio of green cars with fuel-efficient low CO2 and low NO2 solutions as well as working with the automotive community to mature hybrid technology.
“Speaking as a powertrain expert, I think the future is electrification. Oil at the end of the day is a limited resource. It is getting more and more expensive to extract and the price of oil will continue to go up. As this continues, alternative propulsion systems will become more and more attractive.”
Barb Samardzich continued, “I think around 2015, we’ll be seeing electric cars certainly in urban driving situations. As the technology improves and the infrastructure develops, we might even be able to pull into a station and ten minutes later you have a new battery pack. This isn’t tomorrow’s reality, but perhaps within the next twenty years.”
And Dr. Abe concluded, “Our position on electrification is much bigger than just hybrid engines. We are looking at energy recovery systems and different types of hybrid and partial hybrid systems. Ford customers, especially in the US, expect tough cars with winter driving capability. So we need to continue to work all-wheel-drive capability into the hybrid evolution. We are exploring a much broader spectrum of hybrid and electrification.”
The right NVH tool for the job
Mark Stickler, Ford North America P/T NVH Manager, talks about the difference between minor
tweaking and major overhauls and the secrets of good basic engineering
How do you handle the changing automotive sector and the increased product development cycle times?
Obviously, Ford is reducing its engineering costs and therefore significantly reducing its product development cycle time. The best way forward is to have very capable NVH engineers and the best NVH tools available to do the engineering “right the first time”. We feel that this upfront work – the first year of work – is critical to success. Our analytical NVH tools from LMS are a key initial success factor.
Besides the LMS tools, what are the other success factors?
We also have done a lot of work on really understanding the physics to avoid failure modes through the use of NVH design rules. We try to get the design right from an architectural standpoint first. Developing from that point forward is much less work.
Why work like this?
Working from the basic physics and good design architectures is good engineering. It is a competitive advantage. I think the great engineering companies of today are the ones that are fast, efficient and nimble. Faster development times can only be achieved utilizing good design practices and using analytical tools upfront. It makes all the difference between minor tweaking during the “tuning phase” versus major redesigns late in the game.
What is your biggest NVH challenge at the moment?
Downsizing our engines from V8s to V6s to I4s. Each engine has a different NVH signature. It is a tremendous challenge to make sure that the forces coming out of those engines match up with the various body structures and vehicle platforms.
How do you account for brand sound then?
From an engine point-of-view, the sound has to be refined so that it doesn’t get in the way of our brand DNA. We have to tune against a unique NVH signature. We try to design the power pack to be as quiet and refined as possible and then we play the “music” or the tuning structure through the engine peripherals – the exhaust, the induction, the mounting system… It is like tuning an orchestra. There are basic things you can add to a power pack to play the right style of music that you need to meet the DNA requirements.
Where does LMS fit into this picture?
We’re undergoing a real culture change at Ford. We have developed world-class processes that meet our strict
development times. Obviously, LMS solutions and analytical tools, like LMS Virtual.Lab and LMS Imagine.Lab, are a part of these world-class processes, but also the test suite as well. Right now, we are going through a three-year upgrade program for LMS Test.Lab.
What advantages does LMS Test.Lab bring to the picture?
It is a big enabler to meet our development times and costs. We are now in year two of our three-year upgrade and we are seeing noticeable efficiency gains -- in some areas as much as 50%. The unique upgrades we are getting with LMS Test.Lab allow us to acquire data with only one person. This is a huge advantage in meeting our engineering efficiency targets.
The role of virtual technology in automotive design
Shifting from traditional V engineering processes and going virtual is a challenge for practically all the automotive OEMs. Like many other brands, Ford has drastically and rapidly streamlined its product development process known internally as GPDS (Global Product Development System) to improve process efficiencies and deliver faster products to the market that meet high quality standards without exceeding cost limitations. Mario Felice, Manager Powertrain NVH CAE, is quick to credit the virtual revolution as partially responsible for this success.
“Fully integrating CAE into GPDS was crucial to increase efficiency because it drives design optimization upfront in the development process – substantially reducing late design changes and prototype testing. GPDS is a major
departure from the previous test driven development process which mostly used CAE downstream for analysis evaluation and design verification prior to final product test validation,” said Mario Felice. “What Ford has done over the past two to three years has drastically changed the process. Our commitment to the Drive One campaign and this new GPDS process has put us very close to the number one quality spot.”
The fast and furious pace of Ford’s new development cycles
Today at Ford, CAE and CAD people work together to make sure that the design meets all its targets – attributes and functional targets – as well as meeting the extremely short design freeze dates. After the design is frozen, the parts are made and the hardware validated while, at the same time, the CAE department makes sure that their models validate. Then they backtrack and use lessons learned to improve the process the next time. “Our new GPDS process is very efficient. It is a continuous loop. There is no room for fooling around. You don’t have the luxury. You just don’t have the time,” quipped Mario Felice.
In the past, CAE at Ford was a secondary task. Now it is clearly taking a front seat in the development process. The CAE process is driving the design and the team at Ford is finding out that it needs to make sure that everyone has the right tools to optimize and achieve design robustness.
“Especially working as a global company, sharing models with North America, Europe and South America, it is very important that we use the same software tools and technology. At the end of the day, if we have to compare Design A with Design B, we better make sure that the people use the software and do the analysis the same way. That is a real challenge – the communization of the process,” remarked Mario Felice.
The route to multi-attribute optimization
As part of these process improvements, Ford has decided to standardize globally on Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA, a platform that tightly integrates CAE techniques. Ford teams are now busy integrating and revamping various CAE methods and optimization techniques in line with global best practices.
“Today, optimization iterates on the design until the targets are met. In the past, the NVH people were doing the
NVH. And the durability analysts were doing durability and the engineers were trying to integrate all the different CAE attributes together for a robust design. This is changing now thanks to multi- physics software, like LMS Virtual.Lab and LMS Imagine.Lab,” states Mario Felice.
No more data juggling
To deal with different physic domains from various dynamics to hydraulics and fluids, Mario Felice and his team are also reaping the benefits of the 1D and 3D simulation strengths of LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim together with LMS Virtual.Lab. They are using LMS Virtual.Lab for everything from multi-body dynamics to frequency response analysis on FE models and acoustic modeling as well as LMS Imagine.Lab for 1D fluid dynamics. For hybrid engineering tasks, they are importing test data from LMS Test.Lab to create numerical models for analysis.
“We took days out of our analysis process. There were huge gains in time efficiency. Now, we don’t need to
reshuffle data and jump from software to software. With the old situation, there was no interaction; it was really a one-way street,” clarified Mario Felice. “With multi-attribute engineering, you must be able to work in multi-disciplines with an optimization code. This is key to our process, but at the end of the day the customer doesn’t care whether it is NVH or durability. They want toughness, quietness and they want performance. Our new CAE approach and tools cross those attributes to deliver what our customers want.”
One of the biggest challenges for Ford’s team was making sure that the 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 engine was as reliable as the famously powerful Ford V8.
“EcoBoost was engineered with a relentless, disciplined focus on quality that required a zero-defect mindset from engineers as well as our supplier partners,” said Derrick Kuzak, group vice president, Global Product Development.
To date, a fleet of direct-injection twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 engines have endured more than 12,000 hours of durability operation in Ford’s Dynamometer Laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan. This is equivalent to more than 500,000 miles or 800,000 kilometers of customer driving. The “Ford-tough” testing includes 20 individual dynamometerlevel tests designed to push the engine to its limits. The testing protocol verifies the reliability of the complete engine system under maximum engine speeds and loads, coolant and oil temperatures and customer driving patterns.
The Road Cycle Durability test, for example, is designed to replicate real-world customer driving and vehicle maintenance patterns. For this test, engines with EcoBoost technology were subjected to 1,000 cold starts, followed by sustained operation at peak torque of 340 lb-ft and peak power of 340 hp. Extensive CAE models of the turbo and exhaust manifolds, for instance, were created to ensure that EcoBoost technology was not only durable, but that it provided just the right pleasing-tothe-ear engine hum. Engineers also conducted multiple thermal and mechanical fatigue simulations of the exhaust system, examining the performance of the cylinder head interface, exhaust manifold, catalyst and gaskets.
