Applying a System of Systems Perspective to Hyundai-Kia's Virtual Tire Development

Systems engineering has become important in almost every complex product manufacturing industry, especially automotive. Emerging trends like vehicle electrification and autonomous driving now pose a system of systems (SoS) engineering challenge to automotive OEMs. This paper presents a proof-of-concept (PoC) that applies a top-down SoS perspective to Hyundai-Kia Motor Corporation's (HKMC) virtual product development process to develop a performance-critical component of the vehicle, the tire. The PoC demonstrates using the Arcadia MBSE method to develop a consistent, layered, vehicle architecture model starting from the SoS operational context down to the lowest level of system decomposition in the physical architecture thereby capturing top-down knowledge traceability Using the concept of functional chains, several vehicle performance views are captured that serve as the basis for architecture verification orchestration across engineering domains using a cross-domain orchestration platform thereby validating key vehicle/tire performance metrics that influence the tire design parameters. Preliminary results of the study show that applying a method-based modeling approach could provide several benefits to HKMC's current product development approach such as reduced time to model, SoS knowledge capture and reusability, parameter/requirement traceability, early performance verification, and effective systems engineering collaboration between the OEM, tire design supplier, and tire manufacturers.