Citation

Leonelli L, Mancinelli N. Veh. Syst. Dyn. 2015; 53(6): 775-797.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00423114.2015.1014820

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The aim of this paper is the development and validation of a three-dimensional multibody motorcycle model including a rigid-ring tyre model, taking into account both the slopes and elevation of the road surface. In order to achieve accurate assessment of ride and handling performances of a road racing motorcycle, a tyre model capable of reproducing the dynamic response to actual road excitation is required. While a number of vehicle models with such feature are available for car application, the extension to the motorcycle modelling has not been addressed yet. To do so, a novel parametrisation for the general motorcycle kinematics is proposed, using a mixed reference point and relative coordinates approach. The resulting description, developed in terms of dependent coordinates, makes it possible to include the rigid-ring kinematics as well as road elevation and slopes, without affecting computational efficiency. The equations of motion for the whole multibody system are derived symbolically and the constraint equations arising from the dependent coordinate formulation are handled using the position and velocity vector projection technique. The resulting system of equations is integrated in time domain using a standard ordinary differential equation (ODE) algorithm. Finally, the model is validated with respect to experimentally measured data in both time and frequency domains.