Vehicle development teams need to understand complex fluid behavior earlier, faster, and with greater confidence. Whether the challenge is water wading, vehicle soiling, gearbox lubrication, e-drive cooling, snow applications, or multiphase flows, physical testing alone is often too late, too expensive, and too limited for today’s development timelines. PreonLab helps engineers replace late-stage testing with earlier virtual insight. Its particle-based CFD approach makes it possible to simulate dynamic free-surface flows, moving geometries, splashing, wetting, and fluid interaction without the traditional meshing effort of classic CFD.
The result is a faster and more practical way to evaluate design variants, reduce prototype dependency, and make better engineering decisions — using either existing on-site hardware or cloud-based simulation resources.
Industry-Proven
More than 130 customers worldwide rely on PreonLab in automotive, aerospace, and environmental engineering. It supports demanding development processes where accurate prediction of complex fluid behavior is critical to performance, reliability, and safety.
Validated Results
PreonLab is validated against numerous industrial and academic benchmarks and supported by customer reference projects. Combined with tested workflows and real-world experience, this helps engineers make confident, simulation-based design decisions.
Easy to Use
An intuitive interface, streamlined setup, and clear result visualization make advanced particle-based CFD accessible to simulation specialists and design engineers. Its mesh-free approach, multi-hardware support, and Python-based API give users remarkable control over simulation workflows.
Computational Efficiency
PreonLab runs particle-based CFD efficiently across automotive applications, handling multi-scale problems from localized water management studies to large-scale transient simulations. CPU/GPU support and an optimized solver let engineers iterate frequently, compare design variants faster, and accelerate development decisions.
Flexible Deployment and Licensing
Deploy PreonLab on-premise on your existing hardware or through cloud environments such as AVL SimCloud. Both node-locked and floating licenses are available, and floating license pools can be shared within a single site, across a region, or across your global organization.
Vehicle Water Wading
Flooded roads and deep-water crossings create complex wading challenges — bow wave formation, underbody flow, water ingress, component exposure, and changing vehicle dynamics. Understanding these effects early is essential for designing robust, reliable vehicles. PreonLab simulates realistic water interaction using particle-based CFD, capturing free-surface flow, splashing, surface wetting, and hydrodynamic forces on the vehicle.
Gearbox Lubrication
Effective lubrication is essential for gearbox performance, efficiency, and durability. In complex transmissions, oil distribution depends on rotating gears, splashing, air entrainment, flow paths, and heat transfer — making it hard to confirm that lubricant reliably reaches critical components under real operating conditions.
PreonLab simulates gearbox lubrication using particle-based CFD, capturing oil transport, splash behavior, and surface wetting, with support for both single-phase and multiphase flows.
Vehicle Soiling
Rain, snow, mud, and road spray create complex soiling challenges — contaminant transport, surface wetting, sensor obstruction, visibility loss, and reduced reliability. As vehicles rely more on cameras, radar, lidar, and other exterior sensors, understanding how contaminants move across vehicle surfaces is essential for robust ADAS and autonomous driving systems. PreonLab simulates vehicle soiling using particle-based CFD, capturing liquid transport, spray behavior, deposition, accumulation, and surface interaction under realistic driving conditions.
E-Motor Cooling
Optimal operating temperatures are critical for the performance and durability of modern electric motors. In oil-cooled designs, cooling effectiveness depends on how well lubricant reaches thermally critical areas under real operating conditions. PreonLab combines fluid flow and thermal analysis to visualize oil distribution, evaluate oil jet cooling strategies, and identify insufficiently cooled regions. Technologies such as Continuous Particle Size (CPS) make simulation of complex cooling processes efficient, helping engineers refine designs and improve thermal performance before physical prototypes exist.
White Goods
Strong cleaning performance with less water and energy is a central challenge in modern appliance development. In dishwashers and washing machines, results depend on how effectively water is transported, distributed, sprayed, and redirected across complex geometries, components, and load configurations.
PreonLab simulates appliance water management using particle-based CFD, capturing spray behavior, flow distribution, surface wetting, water coverage, and fluid interaction with moving or complex parts.
E-Coating
Consistent coating quality with lower material losses is a key challenge in modern e-coating. During dipping, withdrawal, and draining, liquid retention, film formation, and carry-over depend strongly on component geometry, orientation, bath interaction, and process motion. PreonLab simulates e-coating and drainage using particle-based CFD, capturing free-surface flow, surface wetting, liquid retention, dripping, and drag-out across complex geometries.
Tank Sloshing
Liquid movement inside partially filled tanks strongly influences vehicle dynamics, component loads, and driving behavior. During acceleration, braking, cornering, or operation on uneven terrain, fuel, oil, and other liquids generate complex sloshing patterns, dynamic forces, and pressure loads that simplified methods struggle to assess. PreonLab simulates tank sloshing using particle-based CFD, capturing free-surface motion, wave formation, fluid impact, liquid redistribution, and the resulting forces on tank structures and the vehicle.
After only a short time, PreonLab's SPH code has already established itself at MAN Truck & Bus SE as a leading simulation tool for the development of new powertrains. PreonLab helps us to drive transmission train development forward with decisive impulses already in the early concept phase, thanks to extremely lean model preparation, fast simulation time, and high result quality. The software thus brings numerical flow calculation to a new level in the overall development process of complex powertrains.
– Dr. Tech. Philipp Beierer, Senior Manager Hydraulic Systems, MAN Truck & Bus SE
For an optimal oil supply to the components in gearboxes, the shape of the housing and the internal flow processes play an important role. Using the PreonLab simulation software, it is possible to perform an analysis of the oil flow virtually. The simulations help us understand the flow in closed housings and help us save the cost of expensive, elaborately designed, transparent prototypes.
– Daniel Richter, Team Leader CAE & Vehicle Safety, EDAG Engineering GmbH
ATZextra – Mesh Free CFD Technology Revolutionizes Water Wading Analysis
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation is a promising mesh-free CFD technology that has revolutionized water wading analysis in recent years. AVL and Magna present a validation study that demonstrates predictive capability and efficiency of SPH-based virtualization. Leveraging virtual passenger car testing, development time and reliance on physical prototypes can be significantly reduced.
AVL Customer Case Study - Simulation-based Development of Functional Oil Distribution in Electric Axle Systems
Electric axle systems play an important role in vehicle electrification. Due to their compact design, they can be used in all vehicle segments with hybridized or all-electric powertrains.
AVL Customer Case Study - Water Wading Simulation
“Water wading” is a standard test in vehicle development. Water must not enter critical areas endangering e.g., battery packs, electric components or the air intake. Forces caused by the water should not damage the car body or float the vehicle.
AVL White Paper – SPH-Based Virtual Testing for Streamlined Vehicle Water Management
Efficient and safe water management is an important aspect of the modern vehicle development process, influencing not only durability and performance but also passenger safety and overall vehicle efficiency.
The body is probably the most multifaceted element of a vehicle. Largely responsible for the visual impression, it also provides protection against weather-related influences. In addition, it must be considered that where air flows, air noise is also generated. These noises can be perceived both around the vehicle and in the interior.
Electrified vehicles (EVs) are measured by their performance, range and cost. In addition, a compact powertrain design is desired, which has implications for thermal management.
The nearly silent operation of e-motors makes the vehicles quieter, but results in various noises and vibrations no longer being masked by the engine.
PreonLab 7.1 advances particle-based simulation with new airflow generation for soiling, enhanced vehicle dynamics, and more accurate, faster thermal simulations. Performance, fidelity, and usability are improved through efficiency gains and customer-driven workflow enhancements, enabling smoother, more intuitive simulation work.
This short article displays series of fun, water-inspired simulations that bring fluid motion to life. From crystal-clear pool ripples, cascading fountains, and waves, to energetic splashes and sprays, each simulation captures a different aspect of water in motion, all powered by particle-based fluid dynamics.
Tank sloshing occurs when liquid moves inside a container because of the interaction between the liquid’s free surface and the container walls due to external forces acting on the container. In the automotive industry this is commonly observed in fuel tanks or liquid transportation systems.
Preoneers know that PreonLab is all about particles! With each release we aim to continually add new functionalities and keep improving on existing capabilities, to make our goal of developing the ultimate simulation tool a reality. Accordingly, version 6.2 will bring many additions and updates to expand on the multiphysics capabilities of PreonLab.
Vehicle and sensor soiling is becoming an increasingly important aspect of vehicle design. The focus is clearly shifting from pure aesthetics to challenges related to safety improvement and cost reduction.
Vehicle water management is a critical component of design, which traditionally has heavily relied on costly physical testing. Whereas conventional CFD is hardly applicable due to underlying modeling complexity and extremely high computational costs, SPH technology has virtually revolutionized water management simulation.
Unlock the full potential of virtual transmission development with our PreonLab Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) solution in our exclusive webinar. Experience first-hand a demonstration of PreonLab's advanced modeling capabilities, validated by real-world use cases.
Preoneers rely on the fact that with every new release, PreonLab aims to enhance your simulation experience by increasing efficiency and reducing the memory footprint for simulations. We firmly hold this at the core of our vision towards developing the ultimate simulation tool.
Every Preoneer knows that with PreonLab we always strive to provide the most reliable, usable
and efficient CFD software. But what if you could get your results even faster?
When it comes to complex production processes in the automotive industry like e-coating, using reliable CFD simulation tools to supplement expensive prototyping and physical testing has proven to be a very efficient method to optimize the design stag
Water management is an important aspect of vehicle design. It includes everything from soiling and wading to splashing and the impact this has on the vehicle's aerodynamics. Even the vehicle's windshield wipers are part of it, as is the investigation
Vehicle water management is a challenging engineering problem to address, but the right development tool can make the process more efficient and enjoyable for the engineer.
An important design task of gearbox development is the optimization of its lubrication across a wide range of operating conditions, lubricant viscosities, oil fill levels, vehicle grades and dynamic maneuvers.
Vehicle soiling phenomena can be a major safety hazard due to obstructed driver’s visibility of the road or abnormal operation of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).