Newman Haas Racing and Enterprise Simulation
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MSC.Software The Journal of Virtual Product Development Alpha Magazine July 2006 alpha Newman Haas Racing and Enterprise Simulation - The Winning Combination MD Nastran and Marc Running on SGI Altix Achieves High Performance and Scalability Benchmarks Hydroplaning Prediction Improved With Multidiscipline Simulation Page 1 of 3 [ On the Front Line ] Newman Haas Racing and Enterprise Simulation - The Winning Combination Video of the 2005 NHR Lola Champ-Car performing constant-radius-corner maneuvers around circles marked on the vehicle dynamics area surface. Six-time Champ Car World Series winner Newman/Haas Racing has refocused its simulation activities to include tire models and rough road surfaces in its vehicle dynamics simulations for predicting handling. Tires and rough road surfaces are crucial for damper setup and for predicting and understanding how a car will handle on a given track. Accurate tire models are difficult and costly to generate and the ability to run vehicle dynamics predictions and damper simulation over a rough surface can be cost prohibitive. Since its first season in 1983, Newman/Haas Racing has collected many wins, poles and track records with talented drivers such as Mario and Michael Andretti, Detail of the MTS/Swift 20T wheel force Nigel Mansell, Cristiano da Matta and most recently, transducer (magenta) for measuring Sebastien Bourdais. These have resulted in one of the forces and moments (torque) installed on most successful racing teams in the history of Champ the 2005 NRH Lola Champ-Car. Car. Owners, Paul Newman, one of the most famous actors in the world, and Carl Haas, "One of the most powerful men in the history of auto racing - USA Today," have won six Champ Car Championships, and started their 24th season with a win in the 2006 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Building cars to achieve and maintain such success requires continuous innovation and engineering excellence. Using a manufacturer's tire model that only predicts smooth surface http://www.mscsoftware.com/alpha/print_article.cfm?volume=9&articleId=76 7/27/2009 Page 2 of 3 performance instead of replicating the rough surface of a real track produces inherently inaccurate results. Obviously, the need is for accurate results leading to improved handling and the potential for more wins. Tire Modeling and Simulation "The first thing to understand whenever generating a vehicle model is that the most important and the most difficult part of the car to characterize are its tires," said Brian Lisles, general manager, Newman Haas Racing. "Typically, racing teams rely on tire companies to provide tire data, but tire testing machines are expensive to operate and the tire companies don't necessarily generate the required data or in the manner The MTS Swift Transducer interface required by the racing team." mounted to the right sidepod of the 2005 NHR Lola Champ-Car. Cable from left rear Newman/Haas Racing uses equipment that allows the tires to tire connects to computer mounted on be tested on the car and measure the forces and moments right side of car for logging real time data produced by tires. In order to understand exactly how the tire acquisition. is presented to the road, the team uses ADAMS/Motorsports to emulate the maneuvers performed during the test, thereby producing and defining the same conditions that existed when the tire data was measured. This involves running the vehicle in constant-radius circles on a skid-pad at gradually-increasing speeds, running at fixed speed with either stepped or gradual steering inputs or emulating an on-track corner-entry/mid-corner/exit maneuver to gather steady state and dynamic tire information. A skid-pad is a large flat area made of the same material as a race track. All of the data is measured and recorded and then regressed to produce a tire model. The model is input to ADAMS to make sure its behavior matches the observed behavior of the tire during the physical test. The 2005 NHR Lola Champ-Car being "Effectively, we do our own tire testing to create our own tire prepared to perform objective handling models, which is time and cost effective," said Lisles. maneuvers on a skidpad (vehicle dynamics area). Tire warming blankets Rough Road Handling shown preheat the tires to operating temperatures prior to testing on the semi- In the past, tire data measurements were made on a smooth smooth surface. The dusty, imperfect surface, so when dynamic simulations were run, the user must surface approximates a race track assume a smooth surface. All the irregularities and bumps surface. Computers mounted on left and inherent in a real race track are absent - an idealization applied right sides of car are connected to each when performing pure handling analysis. axle for measurements. "We use ADAMS as a virtual a 7-post rig, i.e. put the car on four hydraulic platforms, vibrate the platforms underneath the wheels, and observe the response of the car," said Lisles. "Consumer cars use four post test methods, but a racing car requires three more actuators to apply the downforce, which is the aerodynamic load applied to the body. We built an ADAMS model of the vehicle/rig system and then validated the virtual vehicle and test rig against the physical ones." This is a very straightforward thing to do. Having validated the results, the standard vehicle handling model can be run on a rough road instead of just a smooth road. This allows damper http://www.mscsoftware.com/alpha/print_article.cfm?volume=9&articleId=76 7/27/2009 Page 3 of 3 (shock absorber) development and setup to take place virtually, instead of requiring a four-post shake test. Conclusion Newman/Haas Racing has been using ADAMS to process independently-gathered tire data that can be applied to a dynamic vehicle simulation on a rough surface. This enables their engineers to develop and tune damper settings for cornering over a rough road. "There are several ways of achieving our objectives including measuring real car data and working backwards to construct why the car responds the way it does. The surface determines One or more optical slip sensors are used how the car responds. The information can be regressed from to measure the vehicle side-slip angle as the measurements to what the road surface would be to make the car moves through a curve. It the car respond in that manner." captures how the grains are moving in the road in relation to fore and aft and side to To achieve this, a high fidelity model is required, which is why side. Together with the wheel-force Newman/Haas Racing validates the ADAMS/Motorsports transducers the slip sensors calculate the handling model on a virtual seven-post shake rig. The virtual longitudinal and lateral slip of each tire. model provides the flexibility of applying any input to the This enables Newman-Haas Racing to vehicle to produce a simulated response. regress their own tire models for use in By making a virtual rig in ADAMS and correlating the results, ADAMS simulations. the tire parameters can be adjusted until they match physical test results. According to Lisles, the engineers get the same response with the ADAMS model as measured on a test rig. "In an ideal world, we could measure the track on a Friday afternoon, send it away and Saturday morning process the information, run the analysis and have suggestions for solving any problems," said Lisles. "We were trying to improve the vehicle dynamics simulation to answer more and more questions. We kept finding the tire information was out of date and wasn't what we wanted. With ADAMS, we found a way of overcoming the inaccurate data problem using the current tires and eventually we'll be able to do this very quickly." "Instead of using expensive rig test time to test tires, we can just go and run a series of standard tests and get the information," said Lisles. "The nice thing is you are running on a real surface with a real car at real speeds. It's the real thing compared to just doing it on a tire testing machine." http://www.mscsoftware.com/alpha/print_article.cfm?volume=9&articleId=76 7/27/2009 Page 1 of 3 [ Company & Industry News ] Current News & Events MSC.Software and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Collaborate to Develop Systems for Energy Independence Joint effort supports the development of alternative energy systems for the government and private sector MSC.Software and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), one of nine U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) multi-program national laboratories, are collaborating to develop computational technologies for next-generation energy systems. The two organizations will demonstrate cutting-edge techniques for the design of fuel cell and alternative energy conversion technologies. The focus is to contribute systems and solutions to help the United States achieve independence from foreign sources of oil. PNNL and MSC.Software will work jointly to develop a range of solutions that are needed for efficient and effective alternative energy design and development, including modeling and simulation, stochastics, simulation data and process management. "Industry has been trying to develop cost-effective fuel cells for some time now and our work allows the private sector to gain access to new and more efficient methods of multidisciplinary design and development that makes affordable fuel cells more possible," said Reza Sadeghi, vice president enterprise computing, MSC.Software. ADVICS Selects SimDesigner Enterprise to Accelerate Early Design Validation inside Native CAD Environment MSC.Software's enterprise solution enables leading brake system supplier to speed product development and reduce time-to-market on a global scale The ADVICS Co., LTD., a leading supplier of automotive brake systems and components, purchased MSC.Software's SimDesigner Enterprise for deployment in its CATIA® V5 CAD environment to accelerate the product development cycle.