Motion analysis of a motorcycle taking into account the rider's effects

In this paper, to analyse the rider's effects on the motion of a motorcycle, we model a rider–motorcycle system by taking into account the leaning motion of the rider's upper torso and his/her arm connection with the handlebars. The nonlinearity of the tyre force is introduced by utilising hyperbolic tangent functions to approximate a Magic Formula tyre model. On the basis of a derived nonlinear state-space model, we analyse the effects of not only the rider's arms but also his/her postures during steady turning by simulations. The rider's postures including lean-with, lean-in and lean-out are realised by adding the lean torque to the rider's upper torso. The motorcycle motion and the rider's effects are analysed in the case where the friction coefficient of the road surface changes severely during steady turning. In addition, a linearised state-space model is derived during steady turning, and a stability analysis of the rider–motorcycle system is performed.