Off-roading is the scenario of driving a vehicle on unpaved surfaces such as sand, gravel, riverbeds, rocks, and other natural terrain. Vehicle designed for that purpose requires jumping from height due to uneven surfaces/patches. This also requires them to sustain a high amount of loads acting upon them on impact. Thus, off-roading vehicles should not only provide intended vehicle dynamics performance but at the same time should be durable as well.
Drop test which is done in a controlled environment is a widely used method to validate the durability of vehicle in such scenarios wherein the vehicle is dropped from a certain predefined height.
In Multibody dynamics simulation, drop test was replicated and acceleration data computed at different locations in the vehicle were correlated with actual physical test data. Correlation was done for different drop heights. This paper presents relevant details of the virtual vehicle modeling, loadcase, test data & subsequent correlation. This correlation helps in building the simulation robustness which eventually helps improve design so as to be capable of overcoming such practical scenarios.