By ATN Editorial Team
Applus+ IDIADA, a global leader in automotive engineering services, today announced the investment in an Integrated Vehicle Dynamics & Ride Comfort Driving Simulator Platform, a revolutionary solution addressing a critical gap in virtual vehicle development.
This pioneering platform enables automotive manufacturers to simultaneously evaluate and optimize both handling dynamics and ride comfort from the earliest stages of vehicle design, significantly reducing development time and costs while enhancing overall vehicle performance.
“Until now, automotive engineers have faced a significant challenge: while virtual simulation has advanced handling and steering development, ride comfort and NVH—especially in the secondary ride domain—remained difficult to optimize before physical prototype testing,” said Guido Tosolin, Senior Manager Vehicle Dynamics at Applus+ IDIADA. “This integrated platform solves this long-standing industry problem.”
The cornerstone of this breakthrough methodology is VI-grade’s Hyperdock, a lightweight cockpit featuring calibrated shakers at driver contact points. Installed on IDIADA’s DiM250 driving simulator, this configuration delivers accurate high-frequency acceleration feedback extracted in real-time from sophisticated vehicle models.
The advanced technological ecosystem includes:
- High-Definition Real-Time Multi-Body models combined with High-Frequency Transfer Function models
- State-of-the-art VI-NVHSim Simulator Software from VI-grade for comprehensive model preparation and acoustic feedback
- New Concurrent RT Machine supporting real-time computing for complex vehicle models with hundreds of degrees of freedom
This innovative approach provides automotive manufacturers with three critical advantages:
- First-time-right prototypes that significantly reduce costly development iterations
- Seamless balance of handling dynamics and ride comfort through integrated optimization
- Early subjective evaluation with accurate vibration feedback before physical prototypes exist
The technology proves particularly valuable for optimizing long-lead components like bushings, subframes, and body structures—elements that are typically difficult and expensive to modify later in development.
The Integrated Vehicle Dynamics & Ride Comfort Simulation Platform will be available to automotive manufacturers worldwide in the second half of 2025.
IDIADA will provide additional details about the adoption of this technical advancement during its contribution to VI-grade’s 2025 ZPS Summit taking place on May 13-15, 2025 in at VI-grade’s SimCenter in Udine, Italy.
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