Development and Validation of a Tool for In-Plane Antilock Braking System (ABS) Simulations

Automotive and Tire companies spend extensive amounts of time and money to tune their products through prototype testing at dedicated test facilities. This is mainly due to the limitations in the simulation capabilities that exist today. With greater competence in simulation, comes more control over designs in the initial stages, which in turn lowers the demand on the expensive stage of tuning. The work presented, aims at taking today's simulation capabilities a step forward by integrating models that are best developed in different software interfaces. An in-plane rigid ring model is used to understand the transient response of tires to various high frequency events such as Anti-Lock Braking and short wavelength road disturbances. A rule based ABS model performs the high frequency braking operation. The tire and ABS models have been created in the Matlab-Simulink environment. The vehicle model has been developed in CarSim. The models developed in Simulink have been integrated with the vehicle model in CarSim, in the form of a design tool that can be used by tire as well as vehicle designers for further tuning of the vehicle functional performances as they relate to in-line braking scenarios. Outdoor validation tests were performed to obtain data from a vehicle that was measured on a suspension parameter measuring machine (SPMM) in order to complement this design tool. The results of the objective tests performed have been discussed and the correlations and variations with respect to the simulation results have been analyzed.