Road variability and its effect on vehicle dynamics simulation

Recommended Citation Udas, Amit. "Road variability and its effect on vehicle dynamics simulation." MS ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank everyone who has helped me throughout the course of my Undergraduate and Master's Degree. First, I would like to thank Professor Lea-Dear Chen for supporting and guiding me over the past years throughout my Undergraduate and Master's program. In addition I would like to thank Joe Kleiss and his team for answering all of my questions throughout the years and providing support for all that was necessary for my Masters to complete. I would like to thank to Jonathan Zeman for giving me his previous model and allowing me to update it for use in my thesis. Without his hard work and guidance I could not have made so much progress in my work. I would like to thank Michael Kelso and Jonathan Stichter for teaching me Virtual.Lab and all of the countless things that they have helped with. I would also like to thank Jennifer Rumping and Margaret Evans at the MIE office who fought for me on countless occasions and made sure everything was provided for me. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their love and support. iii ABSTRACT In the modern age, computer aided engineering software is used in nearly every engineering design application. In this thesis, a multibody dynamics vehicle model in LMS Virtual.Lab simulation platform was updated. The updates included measured hardpoint data of the vehicle studied, addition of two differential gear models to the vehicle drivetrain, and implementation of a multibody dynamics model of a trailer that is attached to the vehicle. To extend the length of the experimentally acquired road profile, a distribution function based methodology was developed to create road profile from the limited road data. The road parameter generated from the distribution function was used to recreate a road profile statistically representative of acquired road profile data. The updated vehicle dynamics model was validated by comparing the simulation results to the vehicle dynamics test results conducted at the Nevada Automotive Test Center. To validate the methodology for creating the road profile, vehicle dynamics simulation results with the distribution function generated road profile were compared to the results from the acquired road profile. The effects of road variability on the vehicle dynamics simulation were also examined. By using a Gamma distribution to define the road roughness, …