Driving an up-to-date passenger car you demand and expect – besides riding comfort – fine handling properties including electronic support in the background e.g. by dynamic stability control(DSC), torque vectoring, active stabilizer, active suspensions. What is behind these features and how are they applied and working?
In former times the development of a new car or better essential components and improvements was based mainly on tests and experiments and hardware adaptations; this is a time and material consuming process. The possibility to apply the mathematics of multibody system models via simulation programs for the prediction of the dynamics of a vehicle accelerates and shortens the development process. For this process it was necessary to develop mechanical models of the car and its components but also to find an appropriate mathematical- mechanical description of the tire behavior and also of other special car components. To improve handling behavior and driving security control schemes were integrated leading to such properties as generally avoiding wheel locking and today this is a common everyday feature of passenger cars. Future developments of control systems aim at automatic driving to relieve the stress of the driver and finally to replace part of his activities. Moreover the control of the suspension system will provide best ride comfort.
Today the application of vehicle and tire modeling, the application of control strategies and the simulation of the complex combined system open the door to investigate a large variety of configurations and select the desired one for the next passenger car generation. Only final tests are necessary to verify the simulation quality and to get the confirmation for a proper introduction to the market.
As a consequence of these developments this course aims to provide the essential features necessary to understand and apply the mathematic-mechanical characteristics and tools for the vehicle dynamics including control mechanism. An introduction to passenger car modeling of different complexities provides the basics for the dynamical behavior and presents vehicle models later used for the application of control strategies. The presented modeling of the tire behavior, also for transient changes of the contact patch properties, shows the necessary mathematical descriptions used for the simulation of the vehicle dynamics. The introduction to the control for cars and its extension to complex applications using e.g. observers and state estimators is a main part of the course. Finally the formulation of proper multibody codes for the simulation leads to the integration of all parts. Examples of simulations and corresponding test verifications will show the profit of such a theoretical support for the investigation of the dynamics of passenger cars.