Vehicle functional design: From PSA in-house software to standard product and modularity for chassis subsystems

摘要

After 10 years using an in-house code for the functional design of its vehicles, PSA has decided to industrialize its internal tool in a commercial software and thus to build a standard vehicle dynamics application usable and sharable by everyone (OEM, suppliers). The mechanical kernel is made of Newton Euler equations optimized by symbolical manipulations to reduce the constraints on the 15 degrees of freedom of the vehicle model. Some PSA standard models (vehicle global synthesis, shaker rig/comfort, K&C test rig, flat track) are presented to show how the application can generate a variety of applications due to an extended modularity. The mechanical model of the vehicle is coupled with different chassis subsystems like the power-steering and braking systems, the powertrain and the suspension components. These chassis subsystems are based on the hydraulic, pneumatic, electric and/or mechanical libraries of the software of concerned. Detailed or simple models of these chassis subsystems can be done according the required complexity. As well, techniques used to reduce complex models to models able to run real time are introduced.