The flexibility of a veichle's body is one of the features which greatly affect the dynamic performance, making its character more comfortable or sportive depending strongly on its torsional stiffness. From the above viewpoint, the main feature of go-karts lies in the lack of shock absorbers and vibration damping systems, this role being entirely played by the tires and the body which is a frame of welded metallic beams.
In this work has been performed the multi body analysis of a kart from the Italian production using the ADAMS software, which allows to reproduce the elastic features of the kart's frame by way of flexible bodies.
Two series of experimental tests were performed, respectively consisting of the static application of a torsion moment on the frame in order to determine its stiffness, and of the execution of circular trajectories made at different combinations of constant speed and constant steering wheel angle. These tests allowed to validate the static and the dynamic response of the multibody flexible model by way of analyses which simulated both the series of experimental tests performed.
Interesting considerations derived from the analysis of the numerical results, suggesting the possibility of extend the analysis method to the tuning of go-karts for each specific race condition.