Today due to time to market requirements, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) prefers platform modularity for Product Development in Automotive Domain. Money and time being main constraint we need to focus on single platform which can give flavors of different category just by changing Ride height and Tyre and some extra tunable. Taking this as challenge still tyre development for new variant demands lot of time and iterations which can lead to delays in time to market. This study provides a virtual development process using driver in loop Simulator and Multi body dynamics simulation which are real time capable and integrating physical tire models. The proposed alteration introduces ride height changes, weight distribution changes, and center of gravity changes from existing vehicle design. The proposed new vehicle variant also introduces tire change from highway terrain type to all-terrain type as it was intended to deliver some off-roading capabilities, thereby vehicle dynamics and kinematics recalibration & tuning required. The conventional development cycles through physical prototypes are time-consuming and expensive. Alternatively, this solution combines high-fidelity tire simulation, driver-in-the-loop (DIL) simulation, and multi-body dynamics analysis to reduce development time and prototyping.
The proposed method begins with baseline & modified vehicle variant comparison, augmenting Adams vehicle models with variant parameters and reference against VI-Grade simulations. Performance gaps are then identified, and a sensitivity analysis identifies critical tire parameters (e.g., cornering stiffness, tread block dynamics) influencing handling characteristics. Virtual tire models with different constructions are then iteratively tested within the simulator for achieving the desired performance. The best tire iterations based on the subjective feel are then considered for ADAMS simulations and the best tire iteration is further selected based on the objective metrics.