Development of Full Car Model for Ride Analysis of Light Duty Bus using MATLAB Simulink 2021-26-0088

Ride is considered to be one of the crucial criterion for evaluating the performance of a vehicle. Automobile industry is striving for improvement in designs to provide superior passenger comfort in Commercial vehicles segment. In Industry, Quarter-car model has been used for years to study the vehicle’s ride dynamics.

But due to lower DOF involved in quarter car, the output accuracy is somewhat compromised. This paper aims in development of a 7 DOF full-car Model to perform the ride- comfort analysis for Light Duty 4*2 Commercial Bus using MATLAB Simulink which can be used to tune the suspension design to meet the required ride-comfort criteria.

Firstly, experimental data and Physical Parameters are collected by performing Practical Test on commercial Bus on different road profiles. Secondly, a Full Car Mathematical Model with 7 DOF has been developed for a bus using MATLAB Simulink R2018a. The model is designed for independent dynamic damping on all 4 wheels along with the spring stiffness. Axle Acceleration data is given as an input to the Mathematical Model and the Roll, Pitch and Bounce behavior is determined as output. The simulated and actual data is correlated and validated using Time domain and Frequency domain analysis. Furthermore, fitment of data in Ride Comfort Index is carried out as per ISO 2631. Therefore, a parametric model to encompass all vehicle architectures ranging from IC engine to electric powertrain under the commercial bus segment is developed for detailed ride and comfort analysis.