Northville, Michigan, December 6, 2024 – Tenneco’s Monroe Ride Solutions (MRS) business, one of the world’s leading suppliers of advanced suspension components and systems for automotive, commercial vehicle and other transportation markets, has won the Digital Engineering Awards program’s 2024 Digital Transformation of the Year Award. The Digital Engineering Awards honor business and technology leaders who have championed the cause of sustainable change. Award winners were announced December 5 in Dallas.
The MRS award entry, “Accelerating Suspension Development Through Neural Networks,” describes how Tenneco engineers utilize neural network-based simulation models to dramatically streamline and enhance the development of suspension dampers, enabling vehicle OEMs to accelerate new-model introductions and reduce the environmental impact of physical testing. This approach, developed by MRS in conjunction with Belgium’s Flanders Make research centre, successfully bridges the gap between driving simulators and the critical subjective behavior assessments made possible through conventional, physical models and on-vehicle damper measurements.
“Our fully digital solution enables us to convert a damper characterization originating from a physical model or actual damper measurements into a physics-augmented neural network that outperforms existing virtual modeling techniques,” said Kenny Motte, Senior Manager Engineering, Monroe Ride Solutions.
The successful application of neural networks in damper development positions Monroe Ride Solutions as a leading partner in accelerating OEMs’ virtual development objectives, according to Ardan Labrie, Engineering Manager, Monroe Ride Solutions. “Some OEMs are targeting 100% virtual development,” he said. “By combining the strengths of a neural network with our extensive set of damper characterization data, we can test more damper settings well before a prototype needs to be built.”
There were over 200 nominations submitted from 16 countries. Nominations for the Digital Engineering Awards are open to product companies, manufacturers and OEMs worldwide. The annual program is sponsored by L&T Technology Services Limited, a leading global digital engineering and R&D company; Information Services Group (ISG); and business news channel CNBC TV18 in India.
Monroe Ride Solutions, a business unit of Tenneco’s Performance Solutions segment, manufactures and markets two broad, leading-edge suspension portfolios for the original equipment channel: Monroe OE Solutions passive dampers and valve systems; and Monroe Intelligent Suspension semi-active and adaptive suspension technologies.
