JR Centre for Advanced Multibody Dynamics

This JR Centre is concerned with the simulation of complex mechanical systems, such as racing cars. In addition to the mathematical modelling of such systems, the focus is on the development of new methods for determining optimal control systems.

Multibody dynamics deals with the behaviour of mechanical systems consisting of several rigid or flexible parts, such as vehicles or vehicle components, robots or production systems.

In recent years, the researchers at this JR Centre have developed the free software FreeDyn, which can be used to simulate the movements of such multi-body systems and the forces that occur. As part of this JR Centre, the FreeDyn software is now to be used for the first time to simulate a racing car in its entirety. To this end, the tyres, drivetrain, suspension and body of the vehicle will be precisely modelled. The aim is to demonstrate that the software is capable of solving such complex problems in a reasonable computing time. With the help of this simulation model, the accelerator and brake pedal positions as well as the steering angle of the vehicle are to be calculated in such a way that the total driving time on a race track is minimised. New optimisation methods will be developed to solve this challenging task. In addition, the extent to which the minimum lap time can be further reduced by varying the system and design parameters of the vehicle will be investigated. Finally, new approaches for the visualisation of simulation result data in the sense of an "augmented reality application" are to be developed in order to be able to project the optimum driving line as well as clearly defined braking and acceleration points onto the windscreen as a so-called heads-up display (HUD).

The aim of the research is to increase the predictive quality of multi-body simulations for the development of new vehicles, the development and implementation of completely new methods for solving time-optimal control problems for complex multi-body systems and innovative result data processing, such as the visualisation of optimised driving lines as HUD lane specifications.