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Emotors adopts Siemens’ Simcenter solutions for NVH testing of electric drives

May 06, 2024

Emotors, a joint venture between Stellantis and Nidec Leroy-Somer, has announced it is using NVH test solutions from the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio to develop its e-drive systems for hybrids, plug-ins, and full electric vehicles (EVs).

The drive manufacturer, headquartered in Carrières-sous-Poissy, France, was formed in 2018. The company has developed a series of next-generation electric drive (e-drives) units for Stellantis brands such as Peugeot, Opel, DS Automobile, and Jeep. One of the challenges Emotors faces is meeting stringent and changing customer specifications, particularly in NVH acoustics, when creating a new range of sounds for EVs, electric drivetrains, and e-drives. These sounds include customized interior and exterior soundscapes, enhanced “silent” driving experiences, and pedestrian warning systems (PWS) or acoustic vehicle alerting systems (AVAS).

To address these challenges, Emotors is using a range of solutions from Siemens. These include Simcenter Testlab software for test-based engineering, which combines high-speed data acquisition with integrated testing, analytics, and modeling tools. Emotors is also using Simcenter SCADAS hardware, which provides a broad range of test data acquisition solutions for multi-physics measurement for acoustic, vibration, and durability engineering. Additionally, Emotors is making use of a comprehensive suite of innovative sound and vibration excitation systems designed to measure driving points and structural and vibroacoustic frequency response functions.

Cédric Plasse, CTO, Emotors, and Bonaventure Ndong Gumedzoe, NVH Testing Manager, Emotors, shared their thoughts on the collaboration.

Plasse – “A key part of our knowledge is not just about good development – being able to design and prototype next-generation e-drives for our EV customers, but also manufacturing them en masse. This is where platform development, a very well-known strategy in automotive, helps us be competitive. We design many things digitally but cannot do everything with just our digital models. To be quick-to-market and accurate, we need to calibrate our models with test measurement data. Our NVH test engineers benchmarked all the tools on the market, and it appeared quite quickly that the Siemens tools were the best.”

Gumedzoe added, “To meet our customers’ NVH requirements, we perform classic experimental modal analysis in Simcenter Testlab. We extract modal parameters, like frequency, modal shape, and damping. And provide this information to the simulation team to confidently predict the NVH behavior of our Emotors’ products. The Simcenter testing solution easily takes us through the main tasks, step-by-step, from the channel setup to final measurement analysis.”

Plasse concluded, “When I speak with my NVH team, they say that Siemens’ support is very professional and there is good communication. We are trying to use Siemens tools across all domains. This is a good thing because we can capitalize on having more people on both sides – the simulation and the test sides — talking to each other. This is a good driver to improve communication. We will capitalize on the success between Siemens and Emotors as we introduce more motors on the market in the future.”