Study on Impact of SUV Chassis Stiffness on Vehicle Dynamics through CAE

Today’s automotive industry is a highly competitive market where continuous innovation in design and production of vehicles is required to gain market share and survive in the market. This led to reduction in the life cycle of the design process and design tools. Identifying, understanding and refining these details is significant to develop sustainable cars. Body and chassis stiffness are important specifications of a passenger car which affects handling, steering and ride characteristics of the vehicle. It has been proved that torsional, lateral and local chassis stiffness can play a role in giving the customer a premium feeling by affecting key metrics in the vehicle dynamics behaviour of a passenger car. In this paper, the effect of chassis stiffness on vehicle dynamics performance is studied using computer aided engineering (CAE). Different attributes of vehicle dynamics like vehicle handling, On-Center feel and vehicle ride are considered as performance characteristics. The chassis stiffness is varied by changing the material characteristics and the above mentioned performances attributes were evaluated. It has been found that the chassis stiffness has different influence on On-center feel as compared to vehicle handling and ride. The present study is helpful in deciding the chassis stiffness during the digital phase of the design.