Aspects Concerning Modeling and Simulation of a Car Suspension with Multi-Body Dynamics and Finite Element Analysis Software Packages

In order to overcome the increasing complexity of the new requirements, engineers have developed different problem solving theoretical approaches sustained by the performant computational technology through specialized software. One such example is the Multi Body Systems (MBS) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) methods which are supported by a multitude of engineering performant software platforms. The current paper focuses on using MBS software to analyze a vehicle suspension and to determine the forces that act on each suspension component. The general approach of this type of simulations requires several steps that ensure a high accuracy of the analysis results. The steps used for the studied subject were: development of a simplified 2 DoF model, development of a full vehicle model, calibration of the vehicle model, suspension simulation and finite elements analysis of the lower control arm. The development of the simplified model was necessary to find the approximate values of several parameters required for the full model. After the simulation performed with the simplified model, the full model was developed and a minimum gap between the simulation and reality was achieved through experimental measurements on a vehicle. The data obtained through data acquisition was used in the calibration of the full vehicle model and the reaction forces determined from the calibrated simulation were used to for a FEA of the lower control arm.