Combined simulation of heavy truck stability under sudden and discontinuous direction change of crosswind with computational fluid dynamics and multi-body system vehicle dynamics software

Abstract

The method of yaw model is used to establish aerodynamic property of heavy truck in computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel test. A model of multi-body system simulation for heavy truck is built based on design and measure data from body, driving system, steering system, braking system, and powertrain system with TruckSim. Aerodynamic reference point of Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and aerodynamic coefficients are as the interface to integrate computational fluid dynamics and multi-body system simulation. A sudden and discontinuous direction change of crosswind is set up in multi-body system simulation, and dynamic performance of the heavy truck is performed by open-loop and closed-loop simulation. Under the given simulation case, lateral offset of the truck for open-loop simulation is 1.55 m and more than that for closed-loop simulation; the roll rate range of both simulations is −1.49°/s to 1.695°/s, the range of lateral acceleration is −0.497 m/s2 to 0.447 m/s2 in open-loop simulation, the range of lateral acceleration is −0.467 m/s2 to 0.434 m/s2 in closed-loop simulation; the range of yaw rate is −1.36°/s to 1.284°/s in open-loop simulation, the range of yaw rate is −0.703°/s to 0.815°/s in closed-loop simulation. The results show that combined simulation of the heavy truck stability can be completed by computational fluid dynamics and multi-body system software under sudden and discontinuous direction change of crosswind.