Nonlinear ride analysis of vehicles based on co-simulation

Due to various nonlinear factors in vehicle suspension, the time domain method applicable to solve a nonlinear model can obtain more accurate ride analysis results. Considering the limitation of single software, the concurrent simulation technique was adopted to analyze the ride performance of a nonlinear vehicle model. The nonlinear vehicle model was built using mechanical system simulation software ADAMS. The road surface model, tire model and driver model were constructed using S function in the MATLAB/Simulink. With the randomly generated road data as input, the simulation model was built and run under the MATLAB/Simulink. The results were imported to ADAMS. An example of ride analysis based on co-simulation was given, and the root mean square value of weighted acceleration on sprung mass and tire dynamic loads was calculated according to the data of time history response. The results of ride analysis show that the co-simulation approach is reasonable and reliable and turns out to be adequate for time-domain ride analysis of a nonlinear vehicle model.