Multidisciplinary modelling and simulation for mechatronic design
Résumé
Improving the market value of a product often means enhancing its quality and its functionalities without impacting its price. Moreover, issues of sustainable development, especially in the transport industry, lead to a reduction of a product’s weight achieved by increasing integration of its components. For example, the integration of the independent control unit to the Valeo’s starter-alternator StARS has allowed removing the cable connections and reducing the mass by merging envelopes and dissipation elements while increasing responsiveness. This strong need of technological integration is at the origin of mechatronics. The integration of multiple components, their compliance and their technological synergy leads to an intensive use of a systems engineering approach and of multidisciplinary methods of modelling and simulation. In the field of mechatronics, the large range of simulation software, data formats and design methods addresses numerous issues that need to be solved. This paper introduces some proposals to increase applications interoperability in order to improve the modelling and simulation of mechatronic systems.