Method for calculating technical characteristics and parameters of movement of scale models of wheeled vehicles, ensuring the similarity of the processes during testing

Abstract

Nowadays, when designing new vehicle models, there is a need to test certain solutions for the formation of a technical appearance both by simulation methods and on production samples. Full-scale road tests of vehicles make it possible to maintain full dynamic similarity during the experiment, but they can be carried out only after manufacturing of a vehicle prototype, which requires a lot of material costs. One of the ways to solve this problem is to create models that are a reduced copy of the designed vehicle. The main difficulty that appears when testing a scale model of vehicle is the need to accurately reproduce the conditions that occur when driving in real road conditions. The purpose of this paper is to find a relationship between the parameters of a production vehicle and a scale model for experimental development of algorithms for the dynamic stabilization of a wheeled vehicle. A method for calculating the technical characteristics and motion parameters of scale models for real full-scale wheeled vehicles while ensuring the similarity of the ongoing processes for scale models and for production vehicles is proposed on the basis of the theory of similarity. The main dependences for scale factors for force, kinematic and dimensional factors are obtained. The similarity of the occurring processes was confirmed by the methods of simulation modeling of the movement of a scale model and a full-scale wheeled vehicle.