Title: An integrated framework for high-performance, high-fidelity simulation of ground vehicle-tyre-terrain interaction

Authors: Radu Serban; Dan Negrut; Antonio Recuero; Paramsothy Jayakumar

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA ' The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Akron, OH 44316, USA ' U.S. Army TARDEC, Warren, MI 48397, USA

Abstract: Assessing the mobility of off-road vehicles is a complex task that most often falls back on semi-empirical approaches to quantify the tire-terrain interaction. We introduce a high-fidelity ground vehicle mobility simulation framework that uses physics-based models of the vehicle, tyres, and terrain to factor in both tyre flexibility and soil deformation. The tyres are modelled using a nonlinear finite element approach that involves layers of orthotropic shell elements. The soil is represented as a large collection of rigid elements that interact through contact, friction, and cohesive forces. The high-fidelity vehicle models incorporate suspension, steering, driveline, and powertrain models. To alleviate the prohibitive computational costs associated with a coupled simulation of the overall problem, we propose a decoupled approach implemented as an explicit, force-displacement co-simulation framework which is demonstrated on several full-vehicle on soft soil simulations. UNCLASSIFIED: Distribution Statement A. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. #28937.

Keywords: Chrono; vehicle-terrain interaction; flexible tyres; granular terrain; co-simulation; force-displacement coupling; hybrid parallel computing; MPI; message passing interface; OpenMP.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVP.2019.100698

International Journal of Vehicle Performance, 2019 Vol.5 No.3, pp.233 - 259

Received: 08 Jul 2017
Accepted: 07 Sep 2017
Published online: 07 Jul 2019 *

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