How Simulation Technologies Are Reshaping Industries

Testing a product before deploying it for mass production is a very common and old practice.

Even professional chefs in restaurants sample their food before delivering it to customers to ensure it’s made correctly. Moreover, people cooking for themselves at home also enjoy this step (which may or may not also be because they’re extremely hungry).

However, when it comes to manufacturers of consumer products or electronics, it’s vital to test out their creations in all kinds of scenarios. For example, a car tire must be able to perform well on snowy days, heavy rain, summer heat, and other situations. Based on the type of tire, it may also need to drive well in the desert, mountains, city streets, rural asphalt, etc.

For a manufacturer to physically test these situations out could end up being a costly affair, not to mention the various permutations and combinations they would need to consider before running a wide range of tests, which could even call for multiple tests in the same conditions.

This is where they opt for a digital solution—one that’s come to be key over the last few years.

Simulation software makes the processes of testing products before launch more cost-effective, more efficient, and overall, much simpler.

Furthermore, manufacturers can expedite such processes from comfortable simulation centers, while running simulations of any condition at any time for how many ever times. This technology helps them determine if and where physical tests are required, allowing streamlined testing.

It’s no secret why simulation technologies are reshaping industries, with some reports showing that the simulation software market is set to grow from $27.19 billion in 2025 to $87.18 billion by 2034 with a CAGR of 13.82%.

As such, many leading companies are investing big in simulation technology to enhance their manufacturing processes. 

Goodyear

In March 2024 Goodyear announced the official opening of its new simulation center in Luxembourg, signaling a new era for tire design and development.

At the time, Goodyear’s VP EMEA Product Development, Romain Hansen, said, “The opening of our industry-leading Simulation Center in Luxembourg displays Goodyear’s commitment to investing in and shaping the future of mobility.”

At this center, Goodyear can try out new tires before making physical versions. Additionally, Goodyear can test and validate tires models for car models that don’t exist yet, paving the road for quicker production and tire modifications pre-development process.

As such, Goodyear uses Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulators, through which testing is done without any messy work of changing tires on a test vehicle, and is conducted in controlled virtual environments.

“Our virtual tire development team has run numerous projects to date with the leading OEMs from Europe, the US and China,” added Hansen. Once the automotive engineers experience our virtual development process, they acknowledge both the potential business and possible sustainability impacts."

This becomes critical as “A tire deforms 40 percent every time it rotates, so that huge amount of displacement, or change, causes those elements to displace, and that causes numerical instability,” says Goodyear’s CTO Chris Helsel.

Goodyear has been invested in simulation software for a long time, going back to at least 1996, when the company’s current CTO Chris Helsel was hired to be a part of a tiny team doing computer tire simulation.

ABB

Keeping to the automotive theme, global automation leader ABB revealed last month that it had entered into a strategic collaboration with Austria-based Engineering Software Steyr to develop powerful simulation tools.

This would see ABB take a minority stake in ESS. However, no financial details were disclosed.

The deal aimed to transform automotive paint shop operations while reducing costs by up to 30 percent.

The partnership also brings customers the benefits of ABB Robotics’ expertise in the automotive paint shop and their success with smart automation solutions while ABB integrates ESS’s technology into ABB’s RobotStudio, the world’s most popular offline programming and simulation tool for robotic applications.


“Delivering faster and more energy efficient solutions for the paint process is the final piece of the puzzle in digitalizing the manufacturing transition in the automotive industry,” said Marc Segura, President, ABB Robotics division.

“The innovative solutions we are developing with ESS will cut vehicle development time by up to a month and generate cost savings of up to 30 percent, making manufacturers more competitive, efficient and resilient. Using the solution, a manufacturer producing 300,000 vehicles has the potential to cut CO2 emissions by nearly 17,000 tons annually—equivalent to flying an airliner around the Earth 19 times.” 

Stone Ridge Technology’s ECHELON

In 2015, Stone Ridge Technology launched the first commercial version of its flagship simulator, ECHELON, which was designed and developed specifically for GPUs (Graphic Processing Units).

Now, in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), GPUs are the driving force powering the world’s most sought-after technology. Meaning that GPU advancement is at the top of the list when it comes to innovation.

It’s also at this time that Stone Ridge Technology announced it was bringing its full-featured reservoir simulator ECHELON to the Middle East by opening offices in the UAE and Qatar.

ECHELON comes with solutions for black oil, compositional, fully implicit solver, complex well management, CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage), multi-reservoir models, integrated surface network, and the unique ability to slash runtimes using multi-GPUs.

The idea is to use fast and accurate simulations to help overcome a crucial challenge observed in the Middle East's hydrocarbon reservoirs, which cover vast areas of various basins of the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabian Gulf, and North Africa.

Hydrocarbon reservoirs contain oil and gas accumulated in porous or fractured rock formations, and reservoir simulations consist of models that predict how fluids flow through porous formations. The challenge was building accurate, geologically resolute models that ran with reasonable runtimes.

Ahead of this, numerous other companies are making big moves to enhance their capabilities in simulation and 3D modeling.

Recently, Hexagon announced it acquired 3D Systems’ Geomagic suite of interoperable software packages, which include products such as Design X, Control X, Freeform, and Wrap. These solutions can automate the processing of 3D scan data to build digital models from physical objects, which can then generate history-based parametric CAD models for use in product manufacturing.

Additionally, it was found that battery energy storage systems (BESS) benefit from simulations, as they allow operators to predict battery performance and lifetime and optimize system designs.

Do you think simulation software will be the next big thing in the technology world?

Let us know in the comments below!