Physical Models developed by MegaRide constitute the RIDEsuite. It comprises four main elements, able to simulate in detail the physical effects characterizing a vehicle interacting with the external environment: the physical thermal model “thermoRIDE” to predict, in real-time, the local temperature of tires; the energy-based wear model “weaRIDE” to take into account and predict the degradation phenomena interesting tire tread polymers; the multi-contact footprint envelope model “threedeeRIDE” to improve the drivers’ feeling and to reproduce the ride dynamics caused by curbs, bumps and road roughness in driving sessions; the advanced interaction model “adheRIDE” to collect the information of the other Physical Models, taking into account tread wear phenomena, road roughness, compound viscoelasticity and grip/temperature/pressure.
The increasingly advanced real-time Driver-In-the-Loop simulators and the multi-variable optimization procedures are getting high reliability and usefulness levels, especially with the testing limitations and costs of motorsport. But if the theoretical assumptions applied in the modelled system are not accurate, then the drivers’ perception and feeling of the car setup, as well as their responses to the vehicle dynamics and the feedback to engineers are not truly representative of the real world.
To help solve this issue, the MegaRide team engineered a set of simulation tools, capable of simplifying the multi-objective identification process, leading to shorter development schedules, even with the full implementation of specific physical dependencies. Thanks to the new RIDEsuite v20 the performances has been improved up to 20% in run-time and up to 30% in initialization phases.