Vehicle handling comparison of motorcycles and Bebek vehicles

The Bebek is a category of step thru vehicles used predominantly in the South East Asian market. A Bebek vehicle feels light in handling (more responsive) compared to motorcycles yet has no stability problems even at 100 kmph. By virtue of certain design aspects, these Bebeks seem to have reduced level of trade-off between low speed responsiveness and high-speed stability, in contrast to motorcycles. To explore the reasons for this difference, a detailed and comprehensive comparative handling study of both a Bebek and motorcycles is presented in this paper. Geometry and structural flexibility are studied. A multibody dynamic model is built for both configurations, with thirteen kinematic degrees of freedom. The models are validated with experimental results and used to study the handling behaviour of both the vehicles. Key parameters that make the Bebek vehicle handling different from motorcycle are identified through simulation on various tracks. These key parameters can be used in parametric study to optimize vehicle handling upfront during product development.