Dynamic analysis of a heavy vehicle using a condensation technique

Abstract

For conducting dynamic design studies on commercial heavy vehicles, finite element analysis is usually required. Existing dynamic analysis techniques involve significant computation time. In order to reduce the computation time, a dynamic condensation method is proposed in this paper. The condensation technique involves sub-dividing the system under consideration into master and slave sub-systems; usually the number of master degrees-of-freedom (DOF) is significantly smaller than the slave sub-system DOF. A heavy vehicle ride comfort analysis is carried out using the proposed condensation technique and the results are shown to be as accurate as the complete model simulation. A saving in computation time is also demonstrated. However, there are issues such as modal truncation errors that occur when using this technique. The paper briefly addresses guidelines to overcome such issues.