{"id":27733,"date":"2021-08-09T13:21:26","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T17:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=27733"},"modified":"2021-08-09T13:21:26","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T17:21:26","slug":"payne-building-144-simulator-is-where-gm-hones-its-vehicle-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/payne-building-144-simulator-is-where-gm-hones-its-vehicle-tech","title":{"rendered":"Payne: Building 144 simulator is where GM hones its vehicle tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milford<\/em>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Since 1924, dozens of buildings have popped up across the General Motors Milford Proving Grounds\u2019 sprawling, 4,000-acre complex \u2014\u00a0the auto industry\u2019s first dedicated testing facility. They are known\u00a0simply by their numbers:\u00a0Building 1, 2, 40, 94 and so on. They house the tools and personnel to keep the General on the cutting edge of the auto wars.<\/p>\n

Building 144 is the latest and most advanced.<\/p>\n

Perched atop a hill at the south end of the sprawling campus, the white, beige and glass building looks out over MPG\u2019s challenging, 17-turn, 2.9-mile test track. Like a rocket sitting on a Kennedy Space Center pad, Building 144 is accessed via a long, covered walkway.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n
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Inside, a large, state-of-the-art simulator has taken General Motors Co.\u00a0products to new heights. Rocket ships like the sublime, mid-engine Corvette C8 and ferocious\u00a0Cadillac CT4 and CT5-V Blackwings \u2014\u00a0some of the first products developed here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we have a brand like Cadillac that has the dual personality of performance and luxury, this facility helps take that integration to another level,\u201d Blaine Heavener, global vehicle performance manager for Cadillac, told a small group of journalists, including The Detroit News’ auto critic, during a rare look inside. Heavener spoke as his colleague, engineer and race-licensed driver Tom Schinderle, hammered the Caddy \u2014 virtually \u2014 around the test track in the \u201cDriver in the Loop\u201d rig.<\/p>\n

Schinderle sat in the cockpit of the simulator\u2019s \u201cbuck,\u201d which pivoted and danced on its electro-mechanical legs while an enormous, wraparound screen projected his path around the formidable track.<\/p>\n

Such simulators are rare around the world. Costing tens of millions of dollars, they are commonly used by professional Formula One race teams to hone their cars and drivers. IndyCar and IMSA teams use a similar rig in Charlotte, North Carolina. Other manufacturers like Mercedes, BMW, Porsche and Audi \u2014 competitors to Corvette and Cadillac \u2014 have their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cA facility like this requires vision,\u201d said Cadillac Executive Chief Engineer Brandon Vivian, who was part of the team that began development on Building 144 back in 2011. \u201cTo get to the level of vehicle sophistication we wanted, we had to go faster.\u201d The facility opened to GM engineers in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe computational speed of parallel processors enabled us to get here,\u201d the veteran engineer continued, his arm sweeping in the direction of a bank of computers that occupy their own glassed-in room adjacent to the simulator buck. \u201cTwenty years ago, this would have required a supercomputer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n
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Combined with the real-world testing on Milford\u2019s test track \u2014\u00a0fondly called the \u201cLutz Ring\u201d after former GM product guru Bob Lutz, who pushed for its construction at the turn of the 21st century \u2014\u00a0Building 144 helps integrate mechanical and electronic technologies that are transforming vehicle handling as well as interiors and autonomous driving.<\/p>\n

Those technologies include Magnetic Ride 4.0 (MR4, for short), sophisticated shock absorbers that allow a vehicle\u2019s suspension to react in milliseconds to changes in body roll, pitch and traction. Combined with updates in chassis materials, stabilizer bars, e-limited slip differentials, adhesives and other vehicle wizardry, the simulator helps integrate developments without engineers needing to constantly build prototypes and put in on-track man-hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe simulator allows us to focus on all the variables,\u201d Heavener said. \u201cThis facility helps us do design reiterations while keeping everything else constant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added global structural vibration engineer Mark Stebbins: \u201cIt means we\u2019re not spending millions of dollars on prototyping. It short-cuts the process by a year or more.\u201d<\/p>\n

That time is crucial in four-year, vehicle-to-market product cycles.<\/p>\n

Cadillac, a brand founded in 1902 on technological precision as well as posh luxury,\u00a0has been pushing the envelope for more than a century. Building 144\u2019s obsession with precision has its roots in the\u00a0work of GM engineer Maurice Olley who, in the early 20th century, pioneered ways to objectively assess a driver\u2019s interaction with the vehicle.<\/p>\n

Olley helped develop a vehicle language using terms like understeer and overseer that became a permanent part of the auto lexicon. Today, Cadillac engineers have coined the term \u201cisolated precision\u201d to reflect the integration of ride, handling and comfort.<\/p>\n

GM has long augmented its production development with auto racing in order to help push components to their limits at the highest speeds possible. The company continues to use motorsport\u00a0for development \u2014 witness the successful IMSA Cadillac DPi and Corvette C8.R programs that have been winning races across North America this year.<\/p>\n

But the electronic toys at engineers’ disposal have given production cars like the CT5-V Blackwing much more bandwidth than even their racing kin. To keep costs down to encourage competition, modern racing strictly limits technical innovation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe technological integration we\u2019re doing on the Blackwings is technically not legal in racing,\u201d\u00a0Heavener said with a smile. \u201cThis is a level of sophistication that dwarfs what we are doing in racing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n
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The CT5-V Blackwing\u2019s obscene performance numbers attest to the\u00a0sophistication of this rear-wheel-drive, 2-ton luxury sedan: 688 horsepower, 200 mph top speed, 3.7-second 0-60 acceleration, track-clawing grip.<\/p>\n

The simulator benefits non-performance vehicles as well \u2014 vehicles like the smooth-riding, truck-based Cadillac Escalade that uses MR4. Made by Ansible, one of five simulator suppliers, the simulator allows vehicle assessment across multiple track environments \u2014 enabling 12-month testing that’s inconceivable on the nearby test track (which was down for repaving during The News\u2019 visit).<\/p>\n

The Ansible rig is not alone in Building 144. It is surrounded by other \u201chardware in the loop\u201d virtual vehicle dynamics labs that test steering racks, brakes \u2014 even a full-production vehicle rig called the 8-Post that helps drivers assess ride and handling.<\/p>\n

They complement a network of engineering labs stretching across the Milford campus back to GM’s Warren Tech Center\u00a0as well as Milford\u2019s 140 miles of test roads. The variables seem infinite as engineers also update the simulators for tire compounds crucial to marrying suspension components to the road.<\/p>\n

Test driver Schinderle, an experienced sprint car racer, has put in hundreds of miles on simulators as well as on asphalt. Though Cadillac lags\u00a0the sheer number of models that luxury giants like BMW and Mercedes produce, Building 144 has helped to accelerate a brand lineup that is now the freshest of any luxury marque.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Blackwings,\u201d says Cadillac global vice president Rory Harvey, \u201care the icing on the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Cadillac sprints towards an all-electric lineup by the end of the decade, engineer Vivian adds that \u201cthere is a lot more to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Milford\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Since 1924, dozens of buildings have popped up across the General Motors Milford Proving Grounds\u2019 sprawling, 4,000-acre complex \u2014\u00a0the auto industry\u2019s first dedicated testing facility. They are known\u00a0simply by their numbers:\u00a0Building 1, 2, 40, 94 and so on. They house the tools and personnel to keep the General on the cutting edge of the auto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27734,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27733\/revisions\/27734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}