Giovanni Agnelli Development Pole

With each new vehicle launched, Fiat amazes the market with original innovations and technological contents in its products. Fiat’s recognition as the automotive company that has broadened extensively the Brazilian consumer’s access to products with more and more technologies and new design solutions is due, mostly, to the consolidation of the Giovanni Agnelli Development Pole. Inaugurated in 2003, with the gathering of the company’s different product research and development departments, the Pole has received constant investments to assure Fiat full qualification in integral development of a new vehicle, from the design concept up to the manufacture of prototypes and tests for validation of technical solutions. About 800 engineers and technicians, dedicated to innovation, development of new technologies and design concepts work at the Giovanni Agnelli Development Pole.

Its construction and equipment absorbed initial investments of BRL 400 million. Since then, it has been receiving successive contributions in the perfecting of its structure. “Fiat’s investments in product research and development show that Fiat has the thought directed towards the future, to assure eternal market share, with products developed with the most modern technology”, Fiat president for Latin America, Cledorvino Belini, affirms.

The Giovanni Agnelli Pole trains Brazilian Fiat with all needed technology to design an automobile integrally and propose intelligent and innovative solutions to the automobile sector. For this reason, different departments were equipped with laboratories with cutting edge resources, capable of performing real scale simulations and dynamic tests that allow it to develop vehicles with quality, sustainability, innovation and safety.

Allied with the latest equipment and modern techniques is the human talent, essential to the vehicle conception and development process. Technicians and engineers investigate new technologies and analyze the best solutions to assure comfort to consumers and respect to the environment.

The Betim plant development center’s know how is comparable with the most advanced that there is in the world. A qualification that represents a competitive gain for Fiat and also for its network of suppliers. At the Giovanni Agnelli Pole it is possible to perform tests in different types of components of the new project, which also expands synergies with the head office in Italy.

The area received the name of Giovanni Agnelli, in tribute to the great man responsible for Fiat’s presence in Brazil, who passed away in February 2003. Agnelli was present since the first negotiations for the installation of Fiat in Betim, at the beginning of the 70’s.

The Giovanni Agnelli Development Pole is Fiat’s most complete development center outside Italy. And the entire complexity that covers the conception of an automobile is present in several studies and experiments performed there.

Constant research is one of the department’s fundamental principles. For this reason, the Pole maintains interaction with universities and other teaching centers, motivating the improvement and specialization of the human capital, besides studies in areas of common interest.
The Pole was implemented for the purpose of being an engineering center ready to obtain quick, efficient and adequate responses to the Brazilian market. Besides autonomy in relation to the head office, it was created to advance technologically, proposing solutions that amaze and enchant the customers.

The structure of the complex

The structure of the Pole contemplates all specific departments of automobile development: the Style Center, the Project Engineering Departments (Electro-electronics, Body and Chassis) and the Experimental Engineering (which covers the departments of Experimentation, Prototypes and Material Engineering).

Style Center

Under the responsibility of the designer Peter Fassbender, the Style Center is Fiat’s only design conception department outside Europe. It relies on a team dedicated to the creation of lines, external surfaces and interiors for the brand’s automobiles. And it also has the most advanced technology at its disposal, which includes a room dedicated towards the viewing of virtual prototypes in two or three dimensions.

The Style Center Virtual Room absorbed contributions of one million Euros and the most modern in Brazil. Its screen provides viewing at maximum resolution of minimum project details. This allows reduction in product development time and in prototype construction costs and even more quality to the process and to the product.

Conceived to meet the creation and development needs of the Style Center, the Virtual Room also functions as communication space between different departments of the Development Pole.
Besides virtual creation, the Style Center has a complete modeling department that allows the search for solutions and the execution of models on 1:1 scale.

Project Engineering Departments

Composed of the Chassis, Electro-electronics and Body Engineering departments, the Development Pole Engineering department relies on the most modern resources for project development and computational simulation.

Besides about 120 project engineers, the Pole relies further on a complete team of professionals tied to virtual simulation activities, such as:
• Structural and crash calculation
• Acoustics and vibration
• Thermo-fluid dynamics
• Vehicular dynamics
• Performance and consumption
• Energy management
• Electro-electronic and power systems
 
The simulation systems used allow project optimization so as to achieve more reliable results in a shorter time, enabling further the study of a greater variety of technical solutions, in the search for its best adaptation along with the market.

The Project Engineering departments have available even a mockup digital laboratory (virtual layout) that allows simulation of assembly and maintenance operations of the vehicles and forecast and solution of possible problems that may occur during manufacture and assistance to the designed model.

Experimental Engineering

Allied to the entire project infrastructure, the Pole still relies on an Experimental Engineering that is among the most complete in Brazil. Among others, it relies on the following laboratories:

• Electromagnetic Compatibility Laboratory – It is the only one of this size inside an automotive company in the Country. It has the function of certifying the immunity of the vehicles’ electro-electronic systems. The interferences caused by radiations produced by mobile telephones, satellite television and other types of electromagnetic influences are analyzed.

• Electro-acoustic Laboratory – It takes care of all high fidelity sound system of the automobile and testing of all automobile audio components: radio, speakers and tweeters.

• Photometry – Also unique in Brazil, the laboratory develops optic sets of headlights and lamps in accordance with scientific parameters of luminosity, coloration and direction.

• CAN Network – In this laboratory all software are validated, responsible for communication between electro-electronic central units, boarded on the automobile. The tests are performed to assure the functioning of programs and also to simulate extreme and undesirable conditions that cause failures in these software, so that the solutions may already be presented and resolved at this stage of the development process.

• Highway Simulator: it reproduces the most extreme situations found on a daily basis, repeating them in the most severe and diverse climatic conditions, for the execution of body durability and component reliability tests.

• Body Torsion Bench: Through the vehicle’s static torsion, it analyzes the body’s physical resistance. This way, it certifies project reliability and assures safety to the driver and passengers.

• Quadriaxial Simulator: Highway simulation system that allows the simultaneous application of stresses in the longitudinal, vertical, lateral directions and acting momentum on the wheels. Its objective is evaluation with respect to fatigue and characterization of vehicle suspension components and its fixations on the body.

• Climatic chamber with roller dynamometer – designed for analysis of temperature with possibilities of variation from minus 30 degrees to plus 50 degrees and speed of up to 200 km/h.

• NVH (NOISE, VIBRATION AND HARSHNESS) Laboratory (acoustics and vibration) – There are four chambers (one of which is under construction) that will allow vehicle assessment and development tests with greater quality and better results in the scope of comfort for the passengers.

• Chamber with roller dynamometer. It is used for the vehicle’s component and system internal noise and vibration tests. It simulates the vehicular conditions during acceleration and deceleration.

• Chamber with highway simulator capable of simulating the most varied type of terrain. It is also used for perception of component and system noise, like door upholstery, seat belts and panel (Planned construction).

• Specific Shaker Chamber and equipped with a shaker that excites vehicular systems, such as rearview mirrors, mapping the vibrations through laser aimed at the object of analysis. It is also equipped with acoustic analyzers for analysis of sound absorbent materials used in the vehicles.

• Psychoacoustic chamber designed to reproduce and analyze internal noise tests. Besides this, it is used for jury type evaluation in a larger group of people. The psychoacoustic system used allows the recording and reproduction of sound as how the human ear hears.

The Experimental Engineering still relies on a prototype construction center where the physical models corresponding to the project carried out are performed at firsthand, where the automobile is materialized before being produced as standard. This is a very important stage, since it serves for engineering to test the first automobiles, and for the suppliers and the industrial department to perform the initial verifications of the processes.

Another important department of the Experimental Engineering is Material Engineering, which relies on metal and upholstery, polymers (plastic materials) and chemical (lubricants and adhesives, among others) laboratories. The structure of these laboratories act as support to new product development and in collaboration with the industrial department, for diagnosis of components and for development of suppliers.
Besides these departments cited above, the Giovanni Agnelli Development Pole even relies on a complete support structure for project management, considering all quality, cost and time to market parameters.

Fiat inaugurates cutting edge virtual room in Brazil

Fiat Automóveis inaugurates the cutting edge virtual room at the Giovanni Agnelli Development Pole, located inside the company’s unit, in Betim (MG). The novelty will be used as one of the main tools for developing and improving the design of Fiat models worldwide.
The virtual room improves project quality, aiding in the analysis of high-light mathematical surfaces (reflections), curvatures, couplings (of door and fender, for example) and in the assessment of textures and colors of plastic parts applied in the vehicle’s interior (panel and doors), as well as the composition with the fabrics of seats, rugs and external colors. With this virtual analysis, the occurrence of eventual problems can be anticipated, thus improving project quality.

The use of virtual resources reduces even costs and the quantity of physical prototypes produced, accelerating development time and quality of a new project. As example, to choose a wheel, there is no need to build it – and to assemble it on vehicles – 50 models for approval. In the virtual room, this can be done on 1:1 scale with a larger number of design proposals and variants, which can be evaluated in lesser time and with greater precision, eliminating the production of prototypes.

Equipped with customized lighting (which creates differentiated scenarios and atmospheres), two projectors, microphones and a screen that measures 5.5 meters long by 2.7 meters high, weighing 700 kilograms and with resolution of 4,096 x 2,160 pixels (more than four times larger than a high definition full HD television set).

The multipurpose space has capacity to accommodate 36 people. In order to have an idea of the resources that the new room will offer, it will be possible to see in it, with 3D glasses, the vehicles that are still in project phase. This allows, for example, greater sensation of proportions of the models and components, where one can almost have the sensation of being inside the vehicle, allowing the exhibition of new proposals of colors and shapes with better quality images. The execution of simultaneous presentations, when the same mathematical file will be viewed and handled, with Fiat Auto Style Center in Italy is still in the testing phase.

Besides the construction of the new environment, which lasted for six months and received an investment of 1 million Euros, the Fiat Style Center also acquired a new five shaft shaper. It will be transforming into real model that, until then, was a mathematical file that was imagined by the designers. The shaped model will be used for analyses, evaluations and certifications, which is later reworked – assembled, polished, painted – and transformed in what is called style model, that is, almost the final product. The shaper can lathe materials that go from clay (a type of loam, easy to be modified) for initial evaluations, up to an epoxy resin for physical models. The equipment is a 3D sculpture that models wooden and clay blocks, giving form to physical prototypes.

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