Digital Twin, A Multiphysics Numerical Tool Chain for Next Generation Electric Drive Design

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Following early adoption, the BEV market has shifted towards a mass market strategy, emphasizing on crucial attributes, such as system cost reduction and range extension. System efficiency is crucial in BEV product development, where efficiency metric influenced greatly vehicle range and cost. For instance, higher iDM efficiency reduces the need for larger battery, cutting cost, or extends range with the same battery size. BorgWarner adopted Digital Twin technology to optimize Integrated Drive Module (iDM) within a vehicle ecosystem. Digital Twin comprises high-fidelity physics based numerical tool suites offering greater degree of freedom to engineers in designing, sizing, optimizing a component versus system benefit tradeoff, thus enabling most efficient product design within economic constraints. BorgWarner’s Analytical System Development (ASD) plan used as framework provides a global unified process for tool development and validation, ensuring the digital print of a real product is verified within operational boundaries. In this paper we will share a brief insight into ASD plan. Further, we will deep dive into development of complex Multiphysics models of iDM, such as establishing co-simulation of magnetics, electric, mechanical forces, thermal, etc. in a complex multi-point energy transfer system, such as Inverter-to-EMachine-to-Transmission (iDM). Ensuring excellent correlation between Digital Twin and real system behavior within the challenging framework of multi-point energy transfer and multi physics domain, where systems and sub-systems operate at varying frequency, such as High Frequency Power Electronics within a Low Frequency Vehicle domain, is a complex physics challenge for the Reduced Order Model (ROM) and its adoption within a Digital Twin. A case study on “Impact of variable switching frequency and variable pulse width modulation strategy on vehicle system level to subcomponent level efficiency, cost and energy consumption” will be presented.</div></div>