Leading the Way in Simulation & Modelling
How Lucid Motors Leveraged Multi-Physics Simulation for Their Luxury Electric Vehicle
Lucid Motors has created a new luxury electric vehicle (EV) aimed at rivaling the top players in the high-end EV market. Their engineers utilized advanced multi-physics simulation software extensively to refine the vehicle’s various subsystems. This software allowed them to create a detailed digital prototype that factored in a wide range of performance metrics.
The adoption of a unified engineering simulation platform was crucial for enhancing collaboration among the diverse engineering disciplines on the design team. This collective approach led to significant performance boosts for both the car and the engineering process.
Building a high-end EV from scratch in just a few years was no small feat. Lucid Motors faced substantial technical challenges, a complex regulatory landscape, and competitors with decades of experience. However, as a new entrant, Lucid was able to capitalize on modern best practices without being slowed by outdated methods.
Lucid pioneered an innovative approach by bringing together the teams responsible for different aspects of EV design—such as electromagnetics, thermal management, structural engineering, and aerodynamics—into a single collaborative space. This close-knit teamwork was further accelerated by equipping the engineering team with a common simulation platform: multi-physics simulation software integrated within the Ansys Workbench environment. This integration enabled the simultaneous optimization of the vehicle’s various subsystems.
This strategy allowed Lucid to address customer demands, solve engineering challenges, optimize components, comply with regulations, and bring a top-tier vehicle to market much faster than traditional methods that use different, isolated simulation tools.
For the vehicle’s aerodynamics, Lucid engineers employed Ansys Fluent, a leading computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. They utilized the Ansys Adjoint Solver to design the car’s body and an innovative air intake and duct system aimed at reducing drag. Ansys DesignXplorer, a parametric analysis tool within the platform, was used to simulate a variety of vehicle shapes to assess aerodynamic performance.
These simulations provided detailed insights into the effects of different shape parameters on drag, using response surfaces, sensitivity charts, Pareto plots, and trade-off plots. With this information, designers and aerodynamic engineers were able to identify the vehicle shapes that minimized drag while still meeting styling and other constraints.
Additionally, Lucid’s team used Ansys Maxwell, an electromagnetic field simulation software, for designing and analyzing electric motors, actuators, sensors, and other electromagnetic devices. Maxwell helped determine the electromagnetic losses in the motor, which were then integrated with a Fluent simulation via the Workbench platform to ascertain motor temperatures.
To cool the motor, Lucid applied two methods: a water jacket molded into the motor case and the injection of transmission oil into the hottest areas, like end windings and the rotor. Engineers created two coupled models—a water model and an oil model—to simulate these cooling systems. Using multiphase transient analysis with the volume of fluids model, they solved the domains cooled by oil. This approach provided heat transfer coefficients for the surfaces contacting the oil and localized oil temperatures. The water cooling system was modeled with a steady-state conjugate heat transfer approach in Fluent.
By leveraging this comprehensive multi-physics simulation strategy, Lucid Motors managed to streamline their design process and produce a world-class luxury EV in a remarkably short time frame.
