The handling behavior of a vehicle describes how it responds to driver’s inputs and is strictly connected to performance and safety. It is even more for sport cars, which favor performance over comfort and passenger space.
During the design phase of a vehicle and all its sub-components, the handling behavior is usually assessed by performing analysis on vehicle response during lateral maneuvers in steady-state conditions, such as constant radius cornering and slow steer ramp maneuvers. In this situation the concepts of understeering or oversteering behavior come into place, generally meaning a vehicle which turns less or more with respect to the path desired by the driver. Sensitivity analyses on vehicle geometry and sub-components design (such as suspension system) are often performed by studying vehicle under/oversteering behavior during the mentioned maneuvers at different conditions (speed, radius of curvature, …).
The combination of thermoRIDE and adheRIDE modules can be exploited by vehicle manufacturers to study tires thermodynamics influence on vehicle handling performance, for example, by analyzing variations in the under/oversteering behavior.
thermoRIDE is a thermodynamic tire model able to provide real-time tire temperature distribution, with particular reference to the internal inaccessible layers, deeply correlated to friction phenomena.
adheRIDE is an evolved version of Pacejka MF model, which considers interlinked multiphysical phenomena that are not considered by the standard formulation, such as thermodynamics effect on tires dynamic behavior.
Thanks to this multiphysical tire model, the same maneuvers simulated to assess vehicle handling performance at different dynamic conditions can be repeated at different tires thermodynamic conditions. The under/oversteering behavior of the vehicle can thus be analyzed for different tires thermal conditions, such as warm-up, optimal or overheating conditions. For example, an excessively high temperature of the front/rear tires may lead to a more understeering/oversteering behavior of the vehicle due to a reduced cornering stiffness of the respective axle.
This advanced simulation platform brings more information regarding the capability of a vehicle to be safer or more performant in all tires’ conditions, enabling a more effective design of a vehicle and its subsystems.
