Practical Applications of CAE for Truck Controllability and Stability Analysis

In recent years, with the expansion of highway-networks, the demand for better stability and controllability for trucks is greatly increasing. Therefore, it is necessary to promote speedy development and improved design quality by the use of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE). However, unlike with passenger cars, analysis by simple numerical simulation with less than 10 degrees of freedom is difficult since the torsional characteristic of the chassis frame and large scale deformation of the leaf springs must be considered.

This paper presents a numerical simulation on stability and controllability of a medium duty truck with approximately 240 degrees of freedom giving consideration to the chassis frame and leaf springs by using mechanical kinematic and dynamic analysis software called ADAMS developed by Mechanical Dynamics Inc., U.S.A., and discusses the following:

1. (1)
   Simulation modeling techniques of components and full vehicle
2. (2)
   Applied examples for the stability and controllability analysis