The demands on the car of the 90's are very high in every aspect. A vehicle manufacturer can no longer concentrate only on a subset of all properties. To gain success, excellence is required in all areas. Furthermore, the customer of the 90's will not accept having to adapt himself or herself to the vehicle. The vehicle must instead be adapted to man. This makes it necessary to study man-machine interactions when developing a new car.
The challenges that the chassis designer is confronted by when designing a new car, do not only consist of requirements for certain chassis-related properties, like in our case driving pleasure, driving safety, ride comfort and noise comfort, but also to a great extent of functional requirements within other areas.
When designing the chassis systems from the overall planned characteristics of the car, it is important to consider all involved properties simultaneously. Several requirements on a car are contradictory. An important task, before hardware solutions are chosen and fixed, is to identify factors which act in “common” or “opposing” directions.
This synthesis can be performed using fairly simple models. Hence it is possible to get an overview leading to the choice of concepts for wheel suspensions, steering and brake systems. In the paper, a method for combining the most important factors which make a car safe and fun to drive is described for the example of cornering compliance.
As a result of the synthesis, the chassis for the new Volvo 850 GLT is described in more detail. Special attention is paid to the Delta-Link rear suspension design, which combines insulation and handling properties.