Abstract
Future vehicles are expected to see a significant reduction of curb weight due to the ever increasing demands on fuel consumption and emissions control. Maintaining current payloads, however, will lead to larger axle load variations with respect to the unladen vehicle. This complicates the design of conventional axle systems that have to meet the current standards for both driving safety and ride comfort.
This contribution presents an analysis of a midsize passenger cars dynamic behavior and ride comfort under a range of load to vehicle weight ratios. A vehicle has been modeled as a multi-body system with three different curb weight variants. These variants have then been investigated in nu-merical simulation under several loading conditions and with selected driving maneuvers.
The results demonstrate the limitations of current suspension systems and tires. They also may help vehicle designers and developers to identify future suspension and tire requirements particularly for lightweight vehicles. Thus it will be possible to maintain current demands on both vehicle dynamic performance and ride comfort.