Darío Solís

Model Reduction Technique for Improved Multi-Body Vehicle Model Simulation Efficiency

A key challenge in improving computational efficiency of vehicle simulation models is that of accurately assessing how modifications in a model affect its efficiency and reliability. Model development and reduction involves establishing and refining both the structure and the parameters of three mathematical elements: the model of the governing physics, the computational dynamic analyses utilized for evaluating the physical model, and numerical evaluation of vehicle performance characteristics. This paper presents the results of on-going research in model complexity reduction of multi-body vehicle models based on the elimination of certain multi-body model components from a vehicle reference model also defined in this paper. The model reduction problem is addressed here by using the knowledge of how computational efficiency is affected by changes in the topology of the multi-body vehicle model to guide the reduction process. In this approach, no terms are eliminated from the equations of motion or key vehicle degrees of freedom are removed from the model. Numerical examples using a reference multi-body vehicle model and three reduced models are used to demonstrate the model reduction technique.© 2003 ASME