Przemyslaw Gromala

Advances in numerical simulations of automotive electronics

9 May 2019, 11:40-12:20

In recent years there is an upward trend in the usage of microelectronic components in the automotive industry. Improved vehicle features in terms of vehicle stability, parking assist, automatic light systems, passenger safety and an evolving emission regulation are the main drivers for this development. The usage of electronic control units and integrated circuit packaging plays a crucial role in accommodating this growing trend. With more advanced vehicle features set to be incorporated in the future, developing a multi-functional module seems to be the way forward. To have the competitive edge, delivering these devices to the market must be cost and time effective.

In order to accelerate the design process, a simulation driven design concept is used eg to define the bill of materials before the first prototype is manufactured. Simulation driven design methodology consists of four stages executed sequentially. These stages address the various concerns during module development thereby resulting in an optimized ECU and IC packaging:

• Virtual DoE: allows optimizing the product’s performance by varying the input factors responsible for the thermo-mechanical behaviour of designed control units
• Material characterization and modelling: the final outcome of this stage is a mathematical description of the behaviour of material that is used in physics of failure simulation
• Physics of Failure modelling: reliability prognosis is done in this stage by using multi-domain and multi-scale modelling techniques in the simulation tool
• Validation: the virtually pre-qualified ECU is verified in this final phase of the simulation driven design methodology

In this talk an overview of the development of an automotive control unit utilizing simulation driven design will be given.

Przemyslaw Gromala is a senior simulation expert and simulation team leader at Robert Bosch Automotive Electronics in Reutlingen. His research activities focus on implementation of simulation driven design for electronic control modules and multi-chip power packaging. His technical expertise includes material characterization, validation and verification techniques and prognostics and health management. Prior to joining Bosch he worked at Delphi in Cracow and at Infineon in Dresden. He holds a PhD in mechanical engineering from Cracow University of Technology in Poland.