The Vehicle Tool is used for building the vehicle definition; the software covers all areas which influence the performance of the vehicle in the simulation. Each of these vehicle areas are set out as separate ‘modules’ which can be individually saved and loaded into the application. Once the vehicle has been constructed from its constituent modules it can be saved as an assembled complete vehicle file for use in the LapSIM solver. One of the advantages of the modular approach to building the vehicle is the ultimate flexibility for file and hence analysis management.
The vehicle definition is comprehensive for advanced users, for example it includes a non-linear tyre model which is based on Pacejkas ‘Magic Formula’ construction. Tyre characteristics for both longitudinal and lateral slip are set for the front and rear axles with variable load sensitivity, camber effects and a range of coefficients for describing the nature of the characteristic curves. The tyre modeling allows the user to either generate a tyre characteristic from scratch in the absence of any manufacturer or measured data or to use a base Pacejka model to generate the top level coefficients required for the simulation.
The entire vehicle definition is constructed from the various component modules including Chassis, Gearbox, Engine, Suspension, Aerodynamics & Brakes. Licensed users can also benefit from a number of additional capabilities, for example:
- Definable suspension compliance’s
- Complex non-linear suspension kinematics
- Fully configurable ride height dependent aerodynamics
- Non-linear user-defined differential characteristics
- CVT configured gearbox option
- Individually saved component/module files