Siemens Digital Industries Software announced that Emotors, an independent e-drive manufacturer, has taken advantage of test solutions from the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industry software to aid in the development and constant improvement of its e-drive systems for hybrids, plug-ins and full electric vehicles (EVs).

Headquartered in Carrières-sous-Poissy, France and formed in 2018 as a joint venture between Stellantis and Nidec Leroy-Somer, Emotors is an independent e-drive manufacturer. Emotors has created a series of next-generation electric drive (e-drives) units for Stellantis brands like Peugeot, Opel, DS Automobile and Jeep.

“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,” said Cédric Plasse, CTO, Emotors. “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.”

One of Emotors’ many challenges is meeting stringent and changing customer specifications -- especially in Noise Vibration Harshness (NVH) acoustic – when tailoring a whole new range of sounds for EVs, electric drivetrains and e-drives. These include customized interior and exterior soundscapes, enhanced “silent” driving experiences, and pedestrian warning systems (PWS) or acoustic vehicle alerting systems (AVAS).

To meet these challenges, Emotors is using a range of solutions from Siemens, including Simcenter Testlab software for test-based engineering, combining high-speed data acquisition with integrated testing, analytics and modeling tools, Simcenter SCADAS hardware which provides a broad range of test data acquisition solutions for multi-physics measurement for acoustic, vibration, and durability engineering. Emotors is also 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.

“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,” explains Bonaventure Ndong Gumedzoe, NVH testing manager, Emotors.

“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,” concludes Plasse.