History

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At the origin of ESI's Virtual Performance Solution, the pioneer software for crash and safety simulation PAM-CRASH was created. PAM-CRASH originated in research aimed at simulating aerospace and nuclear applications. On May 30, 1978 ESI Group simulated the accidental crash of a military fighter plane into a nuclear power plant in a meeting organized by VDI (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure) in Stuttgart. German automobile manufacturers took note and tested the applicability of several emerging commercial crash simulation codes, including what would soon become PAM-CRASH. As part of this project, PAM-CRASH predecessor code simulated the frontal impact of a full passenger car structure in an overnight computer run. This was the first successful full-car crash simulation. 

Based on Finite Element Method (FEM), PAM-CRASH enables the modeling of complex geometry by offering a large panel of structural and continuum elements: beams, shells, membranes and solids. In a typical vehicle crash simulation, shells are used to model thin-walled metal, plastic and composite components. Beams and bars may also be used for stiffening frames, suspensions and special connections. The program offers a large range of linear and nonlinear materials including elastic and visco-plastic and including foam materials and multi-layers composites up to damage and failure models.

PAM-CRASH was used in the first numerical simulation of a full vehicle rollover by BMW AG (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG). Finite element simulation provided accurate determination of the structural deformations while computationally economical rigid body simulation was used during the relatively unimportant deformation and free-flight phases of the simulation. 

The software has been improved over the years. PAM-CRASH 2G, introduced in 2002, allows consideration of manufacturing effects during the design process by chaining the simulation of casting, stamping and composites forming processes to crash simulation. 

PAM-CRASH has been successfully adapted for High Performance Computers use on massively parallel systems. One of the most time critical part of the parallel simulation is the contact handling. Results of measurements on a 128-processor machine demonstrated that a contact search algorithm leads to a better scalability.

Engineers utilize crash simulation not only to determine the end result of the crash but also to view the step by step time history. By viewing factors such as how the bumper is folded in the impact and what is the effect of rib thickness on body deformation in the initial stages of the simulation, engineers can often gain insights that help them improve the crashworthiness of the vehicle design.

In 2008, ESI released for the first time Virtual Performance Solution (VPS), a coherent simulation solution enabling impact, crash, occupant safety (with PAM-CRASH), high velocity impact scenarios, optimization, as well as motion and dynamics analysis. VPS is packaged as an all-inclusive scalable simulation solution also for linear and nonlinear static and dynamic analysis. Version 2011 of Virtual Performance Solution includes some more simulation applications such as: strength and thermal, NVH (noise, vibration & harshness), interior acoustics, and comfort (for virtual seat prototyping).

Desktop Engineering magazine, in its review of ESI Group’s Virtual Performance Solution, which includes PAM-CRASH, said: “The Virtual Performance Solution embraces a lot of things, such as gold-standard tools like PAM-CRASH. But what it really provides you is an integrated simulation environment. That is what makes it so cool. And so does this: You work across multiple analysis domains with a single core model – not different models for every load case. This streamlines your workflow, saving time and money by reducing the number of individual solvers you have to deploy and all that model re-creation business.”