Abstract
This note describes Lotus' functional vehicle dynamics simulation, SAM, and indicates how best to apply its advantages to future vehicle design and development programs. SAM was developed to improve primary safety and vehicle refinement. The project was started when special requirements had to be met for the Lotus Active Suspension, including: (1) complete flexibility of control algorithm and constraints; and (2) easy inclusion into the vehicle development process. It was found that the simulation program needed to be explicitly coded to retain flexibility, and that modelling and simulation time should be reduced by representing only the relevant dynamics. Thus a functional approach was developed, describing a minimal set of dynamics in equations or functions, with a corresponding minimal data set. The simulation software provides a general graphical simulation environment, so that any type of dynamic system can be studied. Anything from a specific component to full vehicle dynamics can be analysed to any level of detail. Specific aspects addressed include: vehicle body dynamics, suspension, steering system, tyre model, validation, lane change and hand wheel flick. Parametric design studies can be conducted easily without influencing many other vehicle parameters. For the covering abstract see IRRD 865940.
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