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An investigation of the effect of rack-housing rubber bushings on the handling characteristics of a vehicle is presented using a sophisticated three-dimensional vehicle model based on multibody dynamic analysis method. Previous research on this problem has been limited to a transfer function model for a simplified one- or two-dimensional steering subsystem. This paper uses a multibody modeling approach to find the effects of the steering-system compliance on the complete vehicle system. Sample simulations for circular cornering and pulse steering show that the steering-system compliance is the source of the frequency peak in the yaw rate to hand-wheel angle response function.

A tire longitudinal and lateral flexibility model has been developed which shows considerable advantages over the other available models or methods. Most of the available methods indirectly considers tire lateral flexibility effect by the inclusion of a time-lag function, whereas the developed model is a multibody representation of a wheel/tire subsystem so that the resultant dynamics are similar to those of an actual physical system. Sample simulations with a realistic three-dimensional vehicle model show the effectiveness of the developed model.

This paper presents a look-ahead driver model with potential application to autonomous cruising of vehicles on highways. The driver model has two physically meaningful parameters: the look-ahead distance and the steering sensitivity. The two parameters are scheduled with respect to the vehicle speed using a preprocessor that converts open-loop steering response data to pseudo-closed-loop steering response data. Sample simulations with a realistic three-dimensional multibody vehicle model are presented for a lane-change scenario. The results indicate that the proposed driver model performs well for a wide range of vehicle speeds.