KU Jayhawk Motorsports program using Adams/Car to gain a competitive edge in Formula SAE
 The Jayhawk Motorsports program at the University of Kansas (KU) has a proud tradition of success in the Formula SAE student design competition. Last year, their team raised the bar higher than ever, finishing fourth overall in Detroit , Michigan , and completing every dynamic event for the sixth consecutive year. To improve on the success of their 2006 car, known as the JMS06, senior Mechanical Engineering student Paul Garcia and his 2007 teammates turned to Adams/Car for full-vehicle suspension design and analysis. While previous KU teams have used Adams/Car with basic FSAE templates for kinematic analysis, the 2007 design has been much more comprehensive.
Creating unique Adams/Car templates for their entire FSAE vehicle gave the 2007 KU team much greater understanding, flexibility, and control over their kinematic design. Developing accurate models of the JMS05 and JMS06 vehicles allowed them to identify important areas needing improvement. Their detailed Adams model was essential for their initial geometric setup and suspension optimization. And with the help of the design of experiments (DOE) capability in Adams, they optimized their geometry for various parameters including roll axis location, bump steer, camber gain in ride, roll and steer, as well as bellcrank and shock motion.
Poor camber gain in roll was a problem area seen on the track and verified in Adams. Another improvement area they realized was in roll-axis migration where they matched front and rear migration for more predictable transient handling behavior. It made analyzing bellcrank motion easy for the innovative inclusion of their unique front transverse mounted mono-shock design.
Using Adams even helped further the KU team's understanding of the impact that changes had to design characteristics. Whether it was researching force-based approaches or the incorporation of 'anti' features, Adams allowed the Jayhawk Motorsports team to see the impact each change had on the full system. While front and rear analysis has proven valuable, the KU team expects continued work with their full-vehicle model to pay dividends beyond the design, all the way to track-side testing. With the car on the ground and running, they intend to simulate changes to settings such as ride height, ride, roll stiffness & damping, and even aero downforce. Using the Driving Machine, they will acquire track data for a competition, load the data into Adams, and take the vehicle to its limits on the authentic course using their full-vehicle model before the race ever starts. They will be able to review understeer characteristics, weight transfer, ride response, and many other properties in both steady-state and transient events. This powerful product gives them a fast and reliable way to tune the car and compare their real-world results to the theoretical model.
The KU FSAE team has a clear vision for how to make continual improvements to their full-vehicle analyses. One area they will be exploring soon is force and compliance modeling. In developing their full car model, they have already developed a detailed Pacejka 02' tire model from their tire data in Adams . They will use this model, along with FEA results they have already obtained from Nastran, to incorporate compliance effects in their full-vehicle Adams model. Using Adams/Flex, they will be able to include these compliance matrices in place of the rigid parts they currently use, thereby obtaining higher fidelity results than ever. They are looking forward to seeing you at the track!
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