GO FASTER
Plastic Omnium’s fuel cell future shines brightly with Siemens
Hydrogen fuel cell innovator slashes development time 25% with Simcenter Amesim and Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling
By Nigel Ravenhill
In 1928, Henry Ford didn’t need companies like Plastic Omnium. When the industrial icon opened the Ford River Rouge complex that year in Dearborn, Michigan, it was the largest vertically integrated factory in the world; iron ore and other raw materials entered at one end with ready-to-run cars and trucks rolling out the other end.
The auto industry has greatly evolved since then, most notably in supply chain management and technologies. Most factories are no longer even referred to as factories, they’re called assembly plants. A century after vertical integration made sense, automakers now combine complex sub-assemblies sourced from companies like Plastic Omnium to produce the cars, trucks and vans that roll out of their plants.
Founded and still headquartered in the Paris metro region, Plastic Omnium has been supplying automakers with parts since 1946. As France started to rebuild its manufacturing strength after World War Two, company founder Pierre Burelle identified an opportunity to supply plastic-based vehicle components to customers like Renault. More contracts with other domestic and foreign manufacturers followed in the post-war boom as Plastic Omnium delivered on its promise of weight reduction and improved performance.
Fast forward 75 years: that culture of and commitment to innovation hasn’t waned and annual revenues are close to €10 billion. Plastic Omnium has become one of the world’s largest and most important suppliers of external plastic elements such as bumpers and energy absorption systems, fenders and front-end modules for cars. With the auto world shifting as quickly as possible, however, away from internal combustion engines to greener forms of propulsion, Plastic Omnium launched New Energies in 2022 as a new business unit to advance hydrogen mobility and help vehicle manufacturers pursue opportunities using fuel cell technology. Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services is an important resource and partner on this journey.
Betting on the Future
Since 2015, Plastic Omnium has invested €200 million to increase its expertise and capabilities across the entire hydrogen value chain. R&D centers have opened in Europe and China, while several key acquisitions have added domain expertise, experienced personnel and vital intellectual property (IP). Plastic Omnium System Engineer Jurgen Dedeurwaerder explains:
“Plastic Omnium acquired companies already active in fuel cell system development and production but they worked mainly on demonstrators. We needed to adapt this for the automotive industry so the fuel cell systems could be mass-produced at high quality. To do this, we needed to master both our development and production processes.”
A Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Primer
Although a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle uses an electric motor, the energy doesn’t come from a heavy battery stack. Instead, compressed hydrogen is housed in a high pressure tank. When running, the hydrogen moves to a fuel cell stack where it passes through a membrane and combines with oxygen to produce electricity (and some water vapor). The electricity powers the motor which drives the wheels. (Some vehicles also have a small high-voltage low-capacity battery powered by fuel cell surplus or regenerative energy to help with acceleration).
Partnering With Siemens for Simulation
We’re in the very early days of developing fuel cell propulsion for passenger vehicles, light trucks, heavy trucks and buses, trains and even ships. There is much promise, but also many technological, design and manufacturing challenges (high-pressure storage tanks, fuel cell temperatures, tank safety and lifespan, etc.) to be solved. The necessity of cost management was therefore obvious according to Dedeurwaerder: “Simulation was essential from the start because we knew that it would improve our processes and help keep costs down.”
The obvious choice was Simcenter™ software, part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform. Dedeurwaerder initially built a complete model of the fuel cell systems, including components, using Simcenter™ Amesim™ software. While his model was ideal for optimizing the architecture and production cost, the level of detail was so great that it would be unsuitable for exploring a wide range of design options.
100 Times Faster
To avoid the time-consuming analysis of complete models, yet still answer the team’s questions, Dedeurwaerder integrated Simcenter's Reduced Order Modeling software into their process.
“We trained the original model with a large range of variables such as the piloting of actuators and environmental conditions,” he says. “We used Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling to create the reduced order model with those training sets. The result was much faster simulations, probably 100 times faster than the original model.”
At this stage, this plant model is then converted to a black box model, which control and software engineers use to develop and test their algorithms. The same process is later used for hardware-in-the- loop (HiL) testing. It also serves as a fast and accurate model that customers can incorporate into their full vehicle models to test within their own environment.
“We also carry out full vehicle simulations in-house for our customers,” says Dedeurwaerder. “We use Simcenter Amesim to look at different powertrain configurations, battery sizes, vessel sizes and fuel cell power levels. This allows us to interact with our customers to find the optimum design.”
Optimization: Balancing Digital and Physical Testing
Using Simcenter Amesim and Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling sharply decreases the amount of physical testing required to analyze the complete system.
“It’s not necessarily a reduction in the total amount of testing, but more oriented toward individual components,” he explains. “You can then build a model using components you’re confident about. With such an accurate model, much of the analysis previously done by full system testing can now be carried out with simulation.”
Dedeurwaerder also appreciates that the simulation can give him a better understanding of phenomena occurring inside the fuel system. Physical testing may not be able to explain, for example, a sudden and unexpected temperature drop. Simulation, however, might reveal that the cause is the presence of liquid water instead of vapor.
Simulation flexibility compared to physical testing is also valuable. “It’s much easier to assess performance in different environments. Setting up test benches at certain altitudes or temperatures can be difficult. With simulation, we can choose any conditions we want. We now verify new components with simulation first. By the time we build the system, we’ve usually got it right, which saves a lot of time and money building further systems.”
Using Reduced Order Models to Protect Intellectual Property
Reduced order models have also proved invaluable when full physics details of components are unavailable. “In some cases, the physics aren’t fully understood, or the supplier can’t disclose them due to IP rights,” says Dedeurwaerder. “So we stress the component in all directions and record the variable data. This is used to train a reduced order model that we integrate into our system model.”
Having invested hundreds of millions of euros in R&D and an IP portfolio of more than 2,200 patents, Plastic Omnium is protective of its inventions. Dedeurwaerder notes that Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling allows Plastic Omnium to judiciously share models with customers and suppliers.
“We can allow them to see cell voltages and net power without viewing all the model details. It’s always within our control. As we work more closely with partners, we can gradually disclose more details as the relationship progresses. And they can never see everything inside the system model or the specific algorithms we use.”
Dedeurwaerder doesn’t hesitate to rave about the value of Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling with those same partners: “We had a supplier who only worked with physical models. Integrating the physical model inside a complete vehicle model was too slow to run. So we showed them the benefits of using a reduced order model to explore complex boundary side effects and behave as a physical model would, but in a much shorter time. You end up with a better final product at a faster speed as you take all the boundary effects into account.”
Complexity Far Beyond Spreadsheets
Before adopting Simcenter Amesim and Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling, Plastic Omnium often used a spreadsheet for calculations. Although it’s possible to get limited results, they are typically inflexible static data. This spreadsheet method doesn’t allow engineers to track gas or liquid properties, for example, that evolve with temperature and pressure. Changing a component requires a new analysis. In contrast, engineers using Simcenter Amesim and Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling can start with a simple model, progressively increasing complexity as their understanding develops.
“Simcenter products are easy to pick up, but you must learn how to generate the training data to be used in Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling. Being able to start simple has allowed us to easily integrate it with our processes and evolve our use as we get to know it better. Exporting and importing data to and from other systems is also easy. For instance, we’re currently building a plant model with several reduced order models and circuitry around them. We set and test the conditions and then integrate it with the complete model using the Simulink interface. It all works well together.”
Overall Development Cycles Cut By 25%
Dedeurwaerder believes that without simulation, addressing all the engineering challenges that Plastic Omnium must solve to enjoy commercial success in this business would be almost impossible. The company would have to conduct far more expensive physical testing and run the risk of making mistakes that would slow the development calendar while sharply increasing costs. Simulation addresses both areas with fewer resources.
“Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling reduces the overall development cycle by around 25 percent,” reports Dedeurwaerder. “It lets us accelerate our simulation models to the point where a detailed fuel cell plant model runs significantly faster than real time with the same accuracy as a full system model. Activities such as model-in-the-loop controller development and testing are faster too. At the same time, it gives us a reliable, IP-protected and cost-effective way to distribute models to other teams, both internally and to our customers to augment the quality of their own products and processes. This results in better quality products being delivered to end users.”
Continuous Improvement from the digital twin
Every major automaker on the planet is working towards and investing in a future where vehicles powered by electric motors have replaced internal combustion engines. The close collaboration between Plastic Omnium’s New Energies division and Siemens has already paid off by shortening the road between the ideas Dedeurwaerder tests and the test drives that prospective fuel cell vehicle buyers and drivers will make from a truck or car showroom.
“The digital twin is vital to maintain a competitive edge. That’s why Simcenter Amesim and Simcenter Reduced Order Modeling are so important to us because they enable us to see inside our products and learn from real-time data to make improvements in future iterations. I expect to see more suppliers using this technology, which will help us all develop better products.”
A Henry Ford Postscript
Remember Henry Ford’s innovation in Dearborn, MI? Ford Motor Company still builds vehicles there. In fact, it opened a half-million square ft. electric vehicle manufacturing operation called the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center on the site of the historic Ford Rouge Center in 2021. The first production model is Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck, assembled using the kinds of component systems delivered from Plastic Omnium’s own factories. In fact, Ford selected Plastic Omnium in 2022 to supply high-pressure tanks for the US Department of Energy’s “Supertruck 3” program.