[ODE] Re: Car stability with lowered centre of mass leads to problems when rolling

[James Bamford]

On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 01:40:38 +0100, Pete Baron <sibaroni at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Jim,
>
> I've been playing with driving simulations for a while now (though not as
> long as some of the folks here!) and one thing that I've always wanted to
> add to my car models is 'active suspension'.  Many performance cars now
> feature this and given the kind of speed we tend to drive in simulations,
> and the limited control inputs we're normally given, it seems like an
> essential addition.
> To simulate this should be fairly easy - simply measure the displacement  
> of
> all four wheels from their neutral position along the vertical axis,  
> average
> it, and add a force to push each wheel towards the average offset using  
> the
> suspension (with joint motors).  (It seems like you might need to add a
> slider joint to each wheel to achieve this, but maybe clever use of the
> hinge2 can gain the same effect).
> The effect of this change would be that when the car body starts to roll  
> due
> to centrifugal (centripetal?) forces, the outside wheels suspension would
> push harder and attempt to keep the car level.  Yet when the car lands  
> after
> a jump or bump, the suspension is still able to absorb the shock and the  
> car
> will ride down reasonably level until it bottoms out and springs back up.
> I'm not sure but I vaguely recall reading an article about sports cars  
> years
> before the advent of the new hydraulic active suspension systems which
> talked about a way of linking diagonally opposite wheels with chains to
> achieve a similar result.
>
> Let me know if you use this idea and get it working... like I say, I've  
> been
> thinking about it for ages and just haven't managed to find the time to  
> try
> it!
>
> cheers,
>
> Pete Baron
> sibaroni at hotmail.com
> http://home.btconnect.com/pete/homepage.html
>

Thanks Pete...

sounds more like what i was imagining this "rollbar" people were talking
about would have done... sounds a little complex but its definately a plan
of attack.. if i have chance i'll have a go and tell you how i get on..

Jim



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