Sensitivity Analysis of Vehicle Handling and Ride Comfort with Respect to Roll Centers Height

Abstract

The role of the roll center on vehicle dynamics has been the subject of several works in the literature. However, the majority of them has been based on low-fidelity models and on roll center’s effect on the vehicle roll dynamics, because of the importance of predicting accurately the time of rollover. In this paper, we aim to conduct an sensitivity analysis of the impact of varying roll center height on vehicle’s performance, while varying also other K&C characteristics. More specifically, the roll centers are varied at the same time with the anti-roll bars. In this respect, we use a vehicle model of 14DOFs, which includes non-equal jacking forces and is validated with CarMaker Software. The vehicle model is excited at the same time with appropriate steer inputs and road profiles in order to focus on handling and ride comfort. The sensitivity analysis provides a fundamental understanding of the exchange between the K&C characteristics to vehicle performance metrics, which represent the transient and steady state handling and the passenger’s ride comfort..