The time to market in the automotive industry is constantly decreasing pushing the carmaker companies to increase the efforts in numerical simulations and to decrease the number of prototypes. In the NVH field, this time constraint reflects in moving the well-established finite element simulations towards the so called “full-vehicle simulations”. Specifically, the CAE techniques should be able to predict the complete behavior of the vehicles in mission conditions, so to reproduce some usual tests, such as the “coast down” test on different roads.
The aim of this paper is to present a methodology to improve rolling noise simulations exploiting an integrated full-vehicle approach. An accurate modeling of all the subsystems is needed, with particular attention to the wheels and the suspension systems. Therefore, the paper firstly covers the modeling approach used to obtain the FE models of tires and suspension system. A particular focus is on the modeling of tires, since the typically used “modal models” are replaced by internally developed simplified FE models. Secondly, the rolling noise simulation approach is presented, by showing an easy-to-use tool developed to automatically set up the chosen full-vehicle simulation. The final aim is to have a quick technique to predict the overall behavior of the vehicle.
The proposed methodology is assessed by means of a numerical-experimental comparison for a coast down test on cobblestone road. The comparison involves the acceleration at front and rear hubs to prove the effectiveness of the tire modeling. Moreover, the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) at the driver’s right ear is compared, which is the main target of the simulation.
