Bushing elasticity significantly impacts vehicle handling and ride comfort. Bushing deformations alter wheel orientation under force, influencing vehicle dynamics. Compliance also isolates vibrations, enhancing comfort. However, optimizing both comfort and handling often presents conflicting requirements. Specifically, minimizing lateral force steer and brake force steer is crucial for safety and stability.
Sensitivity analysis helps pinpoint critical bushings affecting specific compliance attributes. However, achieving optimal balance across all attributes involves complex interactions between individual bushing stiffness values. Traditionally, this tuning process relies on iterative optimization within multi-body simulation software like Adams Car. While accurate, this method necessitates time-consuming model development for complete Kinematic and Compliance analysis.
A more efficient approach involves automatically determining bushing specifications based on predefined compliance targets. This method ensures instantaneous wheel motion aligns with desired characteristics. Bushing stiffness values are calculated based on force distribution and motion ratios between the wheel and individual bushings. By decoupling axial and radial stiffness, this method enables automated radial stiffness configuration.
This innovative approach reverses the traditional trial-and-error process inherent in Adams Car simulations. By eliminating extensive iterations, it drastically reduces development time and streamlines the bushing tuning process. This ultimately leads to faster development cycles and improved vehicle performance.
