Company:Polestar Racing/Volvo Products:Adams Industries:Automotive | Overview: Polestar engineers spend months over the winter offseason struggling to squeeze a few extra tenths of a second per lap out of their cars. One of their most valuable tools is MSC Software’s Adams/Car which they use to evaluate different vehicle designs in critical areas of the track such as the corners. Before we used Adams/Car we found that only 40% to 50% of what we tried at the test track turned out to be effective. Since we began using Adams/Car, 80% to 90% of the ideas that we try on the track succeed.” Per Blomberg, Manager Chassis Development, Polestar Racing Challenge: In the past Polestar used hand calculations
and spreadsheets to perform some very rough
estimates of vehicle performance to attempt
to select the best designs for testing. “These
tools provide some value in sharing knowledge
but contribute little towards predicting the
performance of a prospective design,”
Blomberg said. “We have long used simulation
at the component level to, for example,
evaluate stress and deformation in suspension
components, but we were not aware of the
possibility of predicting the performance of the
complete vehicle until the MSC representative
introduced us to Adams/Car.Solution: Engineers create a model of the vehicle
in Adams/Car to match a configuration
that they are interested in evaluating. One
of the key aspects of the vehicle is the
pickup points in the suspension, the points
where the suspension link arms attach to
the chassis. The front end of Polestar’s
current vehicle has a Macpherson strut
with a damper that attaches to the body
under the hood and a lower link arm that
attaches to the hub. The rear end uses
a multilink suspension. The locations of
the pickup points are limited by the rules
of the racing series. Polestar sometimes
simulates vehicles outside these limits in
order to get a better understanding of the
sensitivity of the vehicle performance with
respect to certain design parameters.
Other parameters whose impact is
evaluated during simulation include the
spring thickness, anti-roll bar thickness,
camber angles, tire properties and weight
distribution in the vehicleBenefits:
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