The rise of the digital economy and the associated increase in demand for customised products has caused the modern premium automotive vehicle to become a complex system. Integration is expected to have increasing levels of influence on innovation for manufacturing processes. This research on the complexity of digital features concentrates on advanced manufacturing facilities for virtual integration and verification for the provision of 'Getting it right first time through good design for speed to market'. As the digital enablement of vehicles become more complex, automotive manufacturing requires a new innovative approach into modelling and simulating with improved analysis tools to successfully integrate existing technologies and processes alongside new technology to meet increasing market demand. Each of these systems requires to be successfully integrated within the vehicle to achieve a global goal. System of systems engineering (SoSE) focuses on the management and control of such complex systems, which offer more functionality and performance than the individual systems themselves. Thus, the strategic intent of the research for the Programme for Simulation Innovation is to use innovations in modelling and simulation to evolve state of the art capabilities in vehicle design and analysis for manufacturing into advanced SoSE, for the digital features of a high interaction multi-disciplinary complex vehicle. This research addresses the challenge of how to use innovative modelling and simulation for rigorous design and analysis to rapidly and reliably introduce substantially increased levels of digitally-enabled functionality into the complex vehicle. The system of systems engineering activities include: -System architecting to define structure and behaviour of the systems of the vehicle -Generation of a framework to enable traceability and relationship preserving specification to aid integration of existing and new technologies -Analysis and behaviour prediction of the vehicle to include the simulation of non-deterministic outputs within a virtual environment to reduce prototyping and time to market. -Greater concurrence in design and verification by the facility to analyse the fully integrated complex vehicle within its simulated environment. The research will specify and implement a Virtual Integration Design and Analysis environment (VIDAE) that integrates simulation from multiple disciplinary systems (e.g. chassis, driver, power train, etc.) within the design and analysis environment, to facilitate advanced modelling and analysis capabilities for the vehicle as a complex system. The prime objective is the improvement of current automotive manufacturing processes to reduce the time to market and thus increase the UK competitiveness with the global economy. The research will demonstrate an innovative path to the commercialisation of academic outputs for systems and SoS engineering that will provide academics and industry with new pioneering processes. This will give the UK a competitive edge by increasing the speed to market of academic research for systems engineering. The research also leverages key international collaborations for model based systems engineering (MBSE) that will better position the UK in the current research in the relevant international organisations. The multi-disciplinary team from Loughborough and Leeds Universities will deliver a joint research programme that addresses the challenges of SoSE for the vehicle as a complex system. New capabilities for rapid introduction of digitally enabled functionality with reduced physical prototyping will be enabled through (i) a formal framework and rigorous methods for an innovative integration of simulation and design analytics with design verification and (ii) an engineering environment for virtual design and analysis.

Virtual reality (VR) systems strive to provide real world experiences in safe and controlled computer generated environments. VR systems attempt to deliver two key features: realism and real-time. In particular, the real time element is essential to provide an interactive experience to the user. To achieve this, current VR systems compromise the realism in the environments they are simulating. This is because even the very latest computer hardware is simply not capable of simulating, to a full degree of physical accuracy, in real time, the complexities of the real world. Furthermore, VR systems seldom offer more than two sensory stimuli (typically visuals and audio, or visuals and touch). Real Virtuality systems, on the other hand, are defined as virtual environments that are based on physical simulations and stimulate multiple senses (visuals, audio, smell, touch, motion etc.) in a natural manner. A key feature of Real Virtuality is the natural delivery of multiple senses to ensure cross-modalities (the influence of one sense on another) that would occur in the real environment are present in the virtual world, as these can substantially alter the way in which a scene is perceived and the way the user behaves. In this project we will consider environments that include 4 senses: visuals, audio, smell and feel (where feel includes motion, temperature and wind-speed). Real Virtuality systems are able to achieve a high level of authenticity in real time by selectively delivering real world stimuli; exploiting the fact that the human perceptual system is simply not capable of attending to all stimuli at the highest precision all the time. Rather humans selectively attend to objects within the scene. This can result in large amounts of detail from one sense going unnoticed when in the presence of competing sensory inputs from another modality, or subtle signals in one modality being strongly enhanced by congruent information in another sense. Knowledge of the relative importance of sensory information in a scene at any point in time, enables the areas being attended to, to be computed at the highest quality, while other areas can be delivered at a much lower quality (and thus at a significantly reduced computational effort), without the user being aware of this quality difference. Visualisation and Virtual Experience, undertakes research into a novel, validated Real Virtuality Platform that will provide perceptually equivalent experiences between real world scenarios and their simulated virtual world equivalents. The authenticity of the results is key to enable decisions within the virtual environments to be taken with confidence that the same decision would be made in the equivalent real environment. The high-fidelity of the resultant virtual system will thus be thoroughly tested and fully validated against two real test cases: Gaydon and Sweden. The anticipated outcomes of the research will be techniques of visualisation applicable at all levels of vehicle design: - from verification of individual components through to the verification of the final vehicle design, - and through all stages of the design process, from initial concept definition through to final design approval, through to manufacturing and onto the dealerships, and marketing. Visualisation and Virtual Experience will remove the need to build physical prototypes and thus bring about a reduction in time to market. This would be impossible to achieve without the ability to effectively and authentically experience a product virtually in its intended context, and to make rapid, objective decisions as a result. The results of this project will address national UK priorities by providing step-change improvements in virtual experiences. The new algorithms and methodologies, although created and fully validated for the automotive industry, will be equally applicable to any sector engaged in the design and high value manufacture of products.

MakerSpaces and Fab Labs are open, publicly-accessible workshops, which provide people with access to cutting-edge tools and technologies (both digital and analogue), which they can use for completing design projects. These sites are commonly run as collectives, with equipment gifted or purchased from donations. Much as public libraries serve to educate a resource-impoverished public, MakerSpaces and Fab Labs provide access to resources too expensive for people to readily own themselves and act to up-skill a community, by providing informal training and knowledge exchange for, and about, design and manufacturing skills. As 'smart objects' become more commonplace the potential for developing, designing and tinkering with 'Internet-of-Things' enabled devices becomes more everyday and yet more complicated, as there will be greater technical barriers to participation (DIY with digital technologies seems understandably harder for the general public). As it becomes possible for people to make their own technologies, and to modify and customise existing ones that they own, MakerSpaces and Fab Labs will increasingly lead the way in supporting people to do just these activities. However, we understand relatively little about how these sites work well, or badly, and about how we can use digital tools to support processes of 'open design' or knowledge exchange, in which design understanding is shared amongst communities. Consequently, we need to go and visit these sites to study them, in situ. Alongside this, manufacturing will increasingly come closer to the consumer, with print-on-demand, rapid production and personalization / customization. There is a great opportunity to explore how open design platforms (web-based technologies) might loop in manufacturers, such that they can become consumers of design skills amongst design communities (setting challenges and federating or 'crowd-sourcing' their design and innovation requirements). But also, crucially, feeding back in to these communities and design collectives, to provide deeper understanding about design processes and techniques, thereby up-skilling the public to create a more design-informed population. Consequently, we need to spend time talking to and working with manufacturers to understand their perspectives on processes of 'open design' and to use both this knowledge and our work with communities in MakerSpaces to co-design a new prototype web-based 'open design' platform, which we can then trial with manufacturers and design communities. The project will also work to understand how new communities of people can be brought in-to-the-fold of design activity, reducing the barriers to participation in design spaces. This will be done through the production of a simple Mobile Fab Lab, which can be toured between sites, such as schools, exposing new audiences to the tools and technologies of the MakerSpace, and fostering a broader interest in processes of 'open design'.

MakerSpaces and Fab Labs are open, publicly-accessible workshops, which provide people with access to cutting-edge tools and technologies (both digital and analogue), which they can use for completing design projects. These sites are commonly run as collectives, with equipment gifted or purchased from donations. Much as public libraries serve to educate a resource-impoverished public, MakerSpaces and Fab Labs provide access to resources too expensive for people to readily own themselves and act to up-skill a community, by providing informal training and knowledge exchange for, and about, design and manufacturing skills. As 'smart objects' become more commonplace the potential for developing, designing and tinkering with 'Internet-of-Things' enabled devices becomes more everyday and yet more complicated, as there will be greater technical barriers to participation (DIY with digital technologies seems understandably harder for the general public). As it becomes possible for people to make their own technologies, and to modify and customise existing ones that they own, MakerSpaces and Fab Labs will increasingly lead the way in supporting people to do just these activities. However, we understand relatively little about how these sites work well, or badly, and about how we can use digital tools to support processes of 'open design' or knowledge exchange, in which design understanding is shared amongst communities. Consequently, we need to go and visit these sites to study them, in situ. Alongside this, manufacturing will increasingly come closer to the consumer, with print-on-demand, rapid production and personalization / customization. There is a great opportunity to explore how open design platforms (web-based technologies) might loop in manufacturers, such that they can become consumers of design skills amongst design communities (setting challenges and federating or 'crowd-sourcing' their design and innovation requirements). But also, crucially, feeding back in to these communities and design collectives, to provide deeper understanding about design processes and techniques, thereby up-skilling the public to create a more design-informed population. Consequently, we need to spend time talking to and working with manufacturers to understand their perspectives on processes of 'open design' and to use both this knowledge and our work with communities in MakerSpaces to co-design a new prototype web-based 'open design' platform, which we can then trial with manufacturers and design communities. The project will also work to understand how new communities of people can be brought in-to-the-fold of design activity, reducing the barriers to participation in design spaces. This will be done through the production of a simple Mobile Fab Lab, which can be toured between sites, such as schools, exposing new audiences to the tools and technologies of the MakerSpace, and fostering a broader interest in processes of 'open design'.

This project is concerned with the development of Ultra High Strength Steels (UHSS - steels with a ultimate tensile strength greater than 1000 MPa) specifically designed to be formed by a novel low energy and flexible manufacturing process, known as 3D roll forming, to produce lightweight crash resistant structures for the automotive industry. The roll forming process is an incremental bending process that turns a flat sheet into a structural profile as compared to traditional stamping processes that involves severe stretching of the sheet to create the required part geometry. The 3D roll forming process is extremely flexible - leading developers of the technology claim a single set of tooling can be used to manufacture up to a quarter of the automotive structure, whereas the stamping process requires an expensive set of tools to be manufactured for each individual part. Furthermore a roll forming line only take 10 to 16 weeks to setup as compared to 18 months for a stamping line. Today ultra high strength automotive steels are usually formed using the energy intensive hot stamping as it is very difficult, and costly, to design steels that achieve the required high room temperature uniform ductility in combination with an ultimate tensile strength in excess of 1000 MPa. As roll forming only requires the material to be bendable, it is proposed that steels with low work hardening rates and a high yield ratio (yield strength /ultimate tensile strength) could be suitable for shaping using this process. The development of UHSS for roll forming allows simpler compositions that are leaner and have a lower alloy cost which reduces exposure to raw materials supply issues (scarcity), have better compatibility with existing capabilities and are more consistent (higher yield/lower scrap). This is potentially a disruptive technology that could revolutionise the manufacture of automotive structural members. It will: eliminate the need for energy intensive hot stamping currently used for shaping UHSS; dramatically reduce tooling requirements and the energy associated in their manufacture; increase material utilisation; avoid the need to use energy intensive materials for lightweighting such as Al, Mg and CFRP; all whilst producing a product that will yield significant CO2 savings during use. It is estimated that if roll formed steel replaced 50 kg of hot stamped components in a vehicle, then 40,000 tonnes of CO2 could be saved in the UK automotive manufacturing industry per annum.