Modeling and Simulation of a MacPherson Vehicle Suspension Concept Using Multibody Systems Techniques

This paper describes the work about modeling and simulation of a MacPherson suspension concept of an Audi 90 using MBS (Multibody Systems Modeling technique SD/FAST commercial software and C computer language

The suspension data was taken from the simulation program Passcar written in PROSPERO FORTRAN by Prof Dr G Rill from Germany

The MBS system equations of motion are generated by a symbolic dynamics package the SD/FAST in form of C code subroutines The subroutines are called whenever needed by a user written routine to perform the numerical computations The analysis and post processing of the results were carried out with the matrix analysis package MATLAB

The results are presented as time histories of kinematics and dynamic quantities on the vertical direction, as well as the wheel camber steering angle and lateral displacement The vehicle is assumed to be riding over an obstacle described as a mathematical input function in the system

Finally the work discusses the ease of the MBS methodology when used to obtain expected system behavior concerning the time spent and the human effort to properly develop a Quarter Car MBS suspension model