Daimler CAE engineers use the automotive industry standard NX CAE — now part of Simcenter 3D. Daimler Mercedes finished switching from CATIA to Siemens PLM’s NX for all of their designs in March 2015.
The test track is 3.5 surface miles that can simulate a typical vehicle’s full service life of 8+ years in only 6 months. The site will be home for up to 40 employees with responsibility for both driving and test engineering. Additionally, there are 14 service bays for technicians to work on and inspect the fleet of durability test vehicles.
As a bonus, the route from Portland to Madras gives vehicles real world validation by passing through interstates, rural roads, and mountainous terrain via the Mount Hood pass. Most recently the route has been used to validate potential gains of truck platooning, just one technology that DTNA is exploring.
The folks at Fleet Owner have posted a great blog and video capturing their experience out on the track. Exactly the kind of experience the commercial-trucking operations industry wants to know about.
Buckle up and grab some ibuprofen…
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And check out a gallery of images from the test track at Trucker.com