Matthias Richwin,
Leopold Kostal GmbH,
Dortmund, Germany
Modern cars offer a wide range of complex functionality that comes with several design challenges. This story discusses some of the necessary updates to a roof module in a premium car and the charging system of an electric car.
The roof module of a particular model houses several components. 90% of the generated heat goes into its printed circuit board (PCB), so temperature control is vital for correct functioning. In addition, there is a call from customers for touch-screen-style sensors, as they are used to this functionality from their mobile devices. COMSOL user Matthias Richwin works at KOSTAL, a company that develops and manufactures mechatronic products for the automotive manufacturing industry, and with his team used simulation to model the roof module's thermal behavior and the capacitive sensor’s sensitivity and electrostatic properties. The team considered different sizes of finger and thumb pads along with the possibility of factors like gloves or hand cream.
KOSTAL also developed an inductive power transfer charging system for charging car batteries without the use of cables. Simulation allowed them to find a coil geometry that works as efficiently as a cable-based system.
Suggested Stories
Application Builder and COMSOL Server: A Review
William Vetterling, research fellow and manager of the Image Science Laboratory at Zink Imaging, created an intuitive ...
Revving up Electrohydraulic Power Steering with Virtual Prototyping
In the automobile industry, the only thing faster than the cars that are produced is their design cycle. Validation ...
Magnets Improve Quality of High-Power Laser Beam Welding
High-power laser beam welding uses a localized heat source to achieve narrow deep welds and high welding rates. ...
ITW Uses Multiphysics Simulation to Cook Up Smart Microwave Oven Designs
To design a "smart oven" with solid-state, convection heating, engineers at Illinois Tool Works (ITW) Food Equipment ...
