On the development of an open-source vehicle dynamics simulation

Abstract

The paper describes the vehicle modeling software under development at the University of Windsor Vehicle Dynamics and Control research group. The intent is to develop a simulation environment for vehicle dynamics and control applications. It should be noted that the software development is ongoing, and that the code described in the paper is a work-in-progress. Nevertheless, there are a number of components that are well developed and useful for the analysis of the motion of a vehicle, or other similar mechanical systems. The first and most mature component is an automatic equation of motion generator. The code generates the linearized non-holonomic equations of motion in state space form from an input file describing the locations, inertial properties, etc., of the various bodies in the system. As an extension to the linear equation generator, a 'semi-linearized' time domain solver is under development, to allow solution of the linear equations in a moving global reference frame. Finally, a track mapping utility is described. Based on a set of points describing the track centreline, the code discretizes the track into blocks of finite length and width, and determines the coefficients of a smooth interpolating polynomial. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.