Optimal Design Of The Car Front Suspention Assembly And Simulation Of Whole Vehicle Based On Virtual Prototype Technology

In recent years, with rapid development of automobile industry driven by thestrong growth in the domestic economy in the Mainland market, the automobileconsumption has gradually entered the daily lives of ordinary people. To win the bigshare in the fierce competition, the major automobile manufacturers must be able tolaunch with a good security, economy and superior handling stability, ride comfort ofnew car models rapidly. The car’s performance depends largely on the chassisperformance, and the most important assembly of the chassis design is the suspension.Virtual prototyping technology can be fully shorten the development cycle and reducedevelopment costs and achieve the quick selection and improvement of the producttarget. In this paper a family car was the object of research. The simulation analysis andoptimization design of front McPherson suspension of the car was made by theapplication of virtual prototyping software ADAMS/Car. The test and performanceevaluation about the handling stability and ride comfort of the vehicle was carried out.The optimization design of the front suspension is effective and feasible from thevehicle’s point of view furtherly. The main work and conclusions in this paper are asfollows:The front McPherson suspension assembly model was built in ADAMS/Car.In theprocess of modeling, the connection of the rigid hinges and flexible bushings weretaken into consideration simultaneously. The parallel wheel travel simulation test offront suspension model was uesd to analysis the change rule between wheel alignmentparameters and wheel vibrating. The results show that the significant wheel trackchange have effect on the suspension kinematic characteristics.There are some defects in the structure of this suspension assembly.The structure of suspension assembly was optimized in ADAMS/Insight. The samewheel travel test was simulated for the optimized suspension. The results before andafter optimization show that the performance of suspension are improved better. Thetest about influence degree between the coordinate variables of suspension hard pointsand the changes function of wheel track was performed with the use of ADAMS/Insight.The results show that the Z-axis coordinates of the front,the rear,the out fulcrum ofbottom control arm have greatest influence on the wheel track change.The vehicle model matching optimized front suspension was established.According to China’s relevant test standards and evaluation criterion, test simulation andperformance evaluation of handling stability and ride comfort for the model were made.The evaluation results show that the car after optimization has good handling stabilityand the ride comfort need to be improved.