Flexible Multibody Simulations to Assess the Impact of Body-in-White Construction in the Handling and Ride of Road Vehicles

EasyChair Preprint 13515

Abstract

With the increasing demand for lighter vehicles, to reduce the CO2 emissions and extend the autonomy of electric cars, it is particularly relevant to understand the effect of lighter and softer materials on the dynamic behaviour of road vehicles. The use of alternative structural joints to bolting and spot-welding techniques is fundamental to join dissimilar materials and composites. Suitable numerical methods are essential to better understand how materials and structural joints employed in the construction of the body-in-white (BiW), which is the main structural component of a road vehicle, affect ride, handling and active safety. However, it is still not clear how realistic changes in the materials and structural joints of the BiW of a car, to reduce weight and increase life cycle, may affect the ride, handling, and active safety. The present work discusses the development of flexible multibody models of road vehicles, considering the inherent tire-road contact phenomena, complex suspension systems, and component flexibility, to examine the effects of changing the materials and structural joints of the BiW in the dynamic behaviour of road vehicles.

Keyphrases: Body-in-White, Flexible multibody systems, Handling, Ride, Road Vehicle Dynamics

@booklet{EasyChair:13515,
  author    = {Pedro Millan and Jorge Ambrósio},
  title     = {Flexible Multibody Simulations to Assess the Impact of Body-in-White Construction in the Handling and Ride of Road Vehicles},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 13515},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2024}}