Today’s vehicles are vastly more fuel-efficient than their predecessors two decades ago. Yet, with requirements such as 35 mpg by 2020 for light duty vehicles in the U.S., fuel economy remains a key challenge for automotive engineers. While technologies such as VVT, turbo-charging, and dual-clutch transmissions promise efficiency improvement, they also add many more design parameters. The traditional method of experimenting with a couple of parameters at a time using prototype vehicles can be both time-consuming and cost-prohibitive. This presentation demonstrates a simulation-led design optimization approach that involves:

1. Developing fast and accurate system-level simulations using Simulink and the Simscape™ physical modeling environment
2. Modeling a dual-clutch transmission using SimDriveline™
3. Optimizing the value of key design parameters such as shift schedule and axle ratio
4. Speeding up simulation and optimization runs using parallel computing