In June 2009, Maplesoft entered into a partnership with the University of Waterloo, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and Toyota Corporation to produce new methods for modeling physical systems. The Industrial Research Chair was granted to Dr. John McPhee, from the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, and then Executive Director of the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR).

Project Goals

Current engineering design uses computer models to explore different product concepts and evaluate their performance. Unfortunately, most existing models are numerical, hiding the physics behind reams of data. A more natural way to model a system is to use mathematics, and the main goal of this research is to develop the theory and computer algorithms necessary to create engineering models in a mathematical form that can be easily viewed and shared between colleagues. This will speed up the "model-based design" of new products, an approach that is being embraced by the automotive industry as it strives to become more efficient and responsive to consumer demands. Dr. John McPhee and his team are collaborating with computer experts at Maplesoft and engineers at Toyota to develop these math-based models and computer simulations, with a focus on automotive applications such as vehicle dynamics, powertrains and hybrid electric vehicles.

The results of this ground-breaking work is being shared with the engineering community through published research papers and shared models.

Below you will find many of the research results from this project. Often, the models themselves are included.  Note that these models were developed using the version of MapleSim available at the time the research was done, and they have not been tested in the current release of MapleSim. 

LICENSE: You may use the models for internal, non-commercial research and development purposes. However, we encourage you to contact Maplesoft if you are interested in using these applications in your own activities, as we may have updated and/or expanded versions of these models available.