The development of modern road implements demands rigorous and comprehensive
analyses of various design aspects, including the dynamic behavior of vehicles
and the structural durability of their components. Multi-Body System Simulation
(MBS) has become an essential tool in developing efficient products, allowing
engineers to virtually assess how a truck + semi-trailer combination responds to
different operational and loading conditions. By employing models that account
for detailed interactions among various vehicle systems -such as suspension,
chassis, axles, and fifth wheel-vehicle dynamics can be investigated in complex
scenarios. These scenarios replicate real road usage, abrupt maneuvers, and
special testing tracks, providing insights into performance under demanding
conditions. This approach also facilitates the cascading of loads between
systems to conduct durability calculations and estimate the operational lifespan
of the implement.
This study introduces a development cycle for complete vehicles using MBS
technology combined with the finite element method (FEM). Such an approach
enables the inclusion of system flexibility, significantly enhancing the
accuracy and reliability of simulation results. The constructed model is
designed to be modular, making it reusable for future projects and enabling
detailed analyses across multiple scenarios for the same vehicle. This includes
extreme cases that are difficult or impractical to evaluate through traditional
physical testing methods. In this study, scanned tracks from the CTR durability
procedure were used to define the boundary conditions of the simulation models,
and the commercial software Altair MotionSolve was employed to perform the
multibody calculations. The simulation results are presented and briefly
discussed, demonstrating the effectiveness of this integrated approach in
advancing vehicle development.