[Gear Up!] Employee Spotlight Series Part 7 - Jan Terziyski

Meet some of our staff members from around the world through our employee highlight series. Learn about their roles at our organization, their favorite aspects of work, how they've developed their careers, the obstacles they confront, and much more.

Discover our culture, people, and working methods!

Meet our seventh interviewee Jan Terziyski, Senior Engineer - FEA Development Support at NEXEN TIRE America Technology Center (NATC)!

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? 

I started in the automotive industry in 1998 after completing my Ph.D. degree in Computational Mechanics at the University of Tokyo. I have worked on different automotive R&D teams in Europe and USA, starting with steel-working processes, structural members manufacturing, vehicle crashworthiness and, since 2002, tires.

My jobs responsibilities have been in applied research as it pertains to product analysis by numerical methods. This covers developing advanced simulation techniques, DOE and design optimization.

I started working at NEXEN TIRE in 2015 and I was put in charge of the NEXEN TIRE America Technology Center (NATC)’s simulation capability development. Nowadays, the work has focused more on virtual product engineering and customer support through numerical methods.

What is it like to be a part of NEXEN TIRE? Can you describe the culture of the company? 

Through cooperative work with the Headquarters’ teams, NATC developed simulation capabilities and has become a reliable technical partner to our OEM customers. The culture at NEXEN TIRE helped work effectively with my counterparts at HQ towards the common goal: providing our engineers with the simulation tools they need for product development, and our customers with reliable and timely answers using virtualization methods.

What do you do at NEXEN and in what circumstances would I come to you for something? 

My role was to start the in-house simulation capabilities at the time they were needed for our first OEM delivery. The whole team at NATC has helped in different ways to achieve that proficiency, from tire and mold design to performance predictions. The daily operations involve automated tire modeling and simulation, tire and material test development and analysis, and technical interaction with OEM customers. I am also the main contact for specialized software installation, licensing and support.

What led you to this career? 

Since high school, I was fascinated with the power of computers, and with physics. Computational mechanics is the natural convergence of the two fields. The vast majority of computer simulations involve gaming and engineering. Not being an avid gamer, it was a matter of time to decide which field of the industry would suit my skillset best.

What do you like the most about your job?

Simulation and related technology has been my job for the past 27 years. I have learned many methods and approaches, and I have developed a few. I view this as a two-way street, where the job complements the professional development.

The engineers at NATC and our counterparts in Korea are professional, courteous and dependable. This allows all different departments at different locations to work as a team. Being “global” doesn’t only mean to attend a meeting at odd hours, it is more important what your contribution to the task at hand is. I wonder, how many companies can say that?

Do you have any unique skills that you feel play a part in your growth as a job position? or Tell us something we don’t know?

The simulation engineer used to be the person no-one believes, save for himself. Like, a meteorologist predicting a sunny tomorrow when it’s been raining for a week. But this changes. Currently, the push for better, faster and cheaper means most industries are turning to computer simulations to develop their products digitally and play multiple use-and-abuse scenarios before building and testing the actual prototypes.

The nature of work is partly art, and partly a house of cards. That is, the skills employed require the use of applied science to arrive at a virtual similitude (build a simulation model) of an actual physical event (say, inflating the car tires) to interpreting the results from a that simulation (say, tire deflection). Although seemingly simplistic, these examples amount to roughly 90% of the tire development process, and it is imperative that they are readily available tools to the tire development engineer, that these tools are robust and the numerical predictions are accurate. More advanced models and analyses address the tire performance on the vehicle, from fuel economy to severe vehicle maneuvers to traction on snow.

Patience helps. Sometimes, simulation of a physical event of 1 second, for example, tire slipping on snow, may take more than a day using modern computers. But, if you get the answers right, that’s still faster than manufacturing, shipping and testing the tire. To be able to perform such job, one has to constantly stay with the developing technologies, interact with researchers in related fields and not be afraid to try new things.

I’m also an Associate of the Tire Science and Technology Journal, a Co-organizer of SAE World Congress Tire-and-Wheel sessions and NEXEN TIRE’s representative at Centire (CENter for TIre REsearch), Virginia Tech.