Globally Independent Coordinates for Real-Time Vehicle Simulation

Models of the dynamics of multibody systems generally result in a set of differential-algebraic equations (DAE). State-space methods for solving the DAE of motion are based on reduction of the DAE to ordinary differential equations (ODE), by means of local parameterizations of the constraint manifold that must be often modified during a simulation. In this paper it is shown that, for vehicle multibody systems, generalized coordinates that are dual to suspension and/or control forces in the model are independent for the entire range of motion of the system. Therefore, these additional coordinates, together with Cartesian coordinates describing the position and orientation of the chassis, form a set of globally independent coordinates. In addition to the immediate advantage of avoiding the computationally expensive redefinition of local parameterization in a state-space formulation, the existence of globally independent coordinates leads to efficient algorithms for recovery of dependent generalized coordinates. A topology based approach to identify efficient computational sequences is presented. Numerical examples with realistic vehicle handling models demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed approach, relative to the conventional Cartesian coordinate formulation, yielding real-time for vehicle simulation. [S1050-0472(00)00404-9]