Volvo cars drive further to its crash-free ambition with the introduction of Scalable Product Architecture for deployment on future models.
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Executives at Volvo Car Group are steering the company towards its admirable and ambitious aim that nobody will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by 2020. A key aspect of its strategic plans lies in the development of its newly released Scalable Product Architecture, a design approach that capitalises on the best design features in existing models and rolls them out with further enhancements onto new products.
The Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) is a holistic approach covering a wide range of safety technology including structural engineering and materials, electrical architecture, connected car technology, Advanced Driver Assist Systems (ADAS), passive and active safety systems and driver-centric ergonomics and industrial design.
This list of technology groupings can be expanded into hundreds of discrete systems, devices, components and methods that combine to offer the kind of protection levels that are appropriate for Volvo to meet its 2020 goal and are divided into two broad groups – accident mitigation for protecting the occupants against serious injury in the event of a crash and accident avoidance which seeks to prevent an accident from occuring in the first place.
Protecting vehicle occupants
At the core of occupant protection is the vehicle safety cage, the current level of which is the result of decades of research, development and continuous improvement in terms of materials technology and structural design. According to Volvo’s Senior Manager for Safety Strategy and Requirements, Jan Ivarsson, the SPA approach acts as a catalyst for further improvements. The 7% hot-formed boron steel used in the safety cage to make the Volvo XC90 a structurally very safe car at its launch 11 years ago has now grown to 40% in the 2014 XC90 providing additional strength without any increase in mass.
Scalable Product Architecture is also being deployed in the continuous development of passive safety systems within the vehicle to protect the driver and other occupants during a collision. Enhancements are continuing to be developed and rolled out to new models for whiplash protection, seat belts and inflatable curtains as well as the continued development of air bags to offer extra cushioning to vulnerable parts of the body or to disperse energy at vulnerable pressure points.
Active safety systems include smart seat belt pre-tensioning including the use of rear-facing radar systems to detect imminent rear impact collisions, the damage from which can be mitigated by pre-tensioning seat belts to help keep the vehicle occupants in position at the moment of impact.
The occupant protection systems in Volvo cars is part of a holistic system with 360 degree zones centred around the driver offering both protection and the ability to have visual and sensor-based connections with the outside world.
Collision Avoidance
The collision avoidance features of the SPA are focused on the unique electrical architecture which takes vehicle intelligence to new levels. Designed using a platform approach, it is the basis of all existing and future electrical, electronic, communications and infotainment requirements. This approach provides the basis for the rapid deployment of new technologies and sophisticated vehicle functions.
According to Volvo, the electrical scalable product architecture is built on four domain masters, namely vehicle dynamics, safety, car body and infotainment forming the nerve system for full control over all vehicle connections with each master being connected to each and every unit within the overall SPA.
Avoiding crashes holds enormous importance in Volvo’s “zero deaths and serious injuries” goal and huge amounts of development effort are being expended in collision avoidance technologies. This revolves predominantly around the use of cameras, radars and other sensor technologies to detect objects that may not be in the driver’s capability to detect.
According to Jan Ivarsson, unintentional road departure is one of the most dangerous types of collisions resulting in high numbers of deaths and serious injuries in modern traffic, something that can be avoided with autonomous steering intervention in critical circumstances based on sensor inputs. Similarly, collisions with large animals and pedestrians can be avoided using advanced sensor technology, particularly at night and in poor visibility due to adverse weather.
Extending visibility beyond the range of the driver can also be achieved with automatic communications technology. The field of vehicle-to-infrastructure (v2i) and vehicle-to-vehicle (v2v) – collectively known as v2x – technology is at a phase where the exciting potential applications and research is moving faster than real-world development but manufacturers such as Volvo are at the forefront of putting the technology into practice.
V2x technology extends visibility even beyond that of sensors and radar and opens up a whole new field of possibilities for advanced warnings of road conditions and other factors than influence a safe drive.
V2x also paves the way to autonomy which is another aspect of Volvo’s Scalable Product Architecture. Advanced Driver Assist Systems (ADAS) is a key element of developing autonomous cars and Volvo already has some level of autonomy in the latest XC90 including Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and steer assist which enables the car to follow the vehicle ahead autonomously when in queues of traffic.
Autonomy also helps in some way to overcome the challenge of distracted driving in cars that are becoming increasingly connected. This potential for distraction is the downside of the otherwised improved comfort and safety that connectivity affords. The safe availability of connected systems is something that is of high importance to Volvo and autonomy plays an important role within this goal.
Within Volvo’s Scalable Product Architecture, the emphasis is on the scalability. As technology continues to take leaps and bounds in driver assistance, infotainment, communications, passive and active safety systems and autonomy, the SPA provides a platform that each new advance can be slotted into rapidly enabling each new Volvo to take a new step forward in the company’s goal to have no deaths or serious injuries in their new cars by 2020.