Construction and Use of Surrogate Models for the Dynamic Analysis of Multibody Systems 2010-01-0032

This study outlines an approach for speeding up the simulation of the dynamic response of vehicle models that include hysteretic nonlinear tire components. The method proposed replaces the hysteretic nonlinear tire model with a surrogate model that emulates the dynamic response of the actual tire.

The approach is demonstrated via a dynamic simulation of a quarter vehicle model. In the proposed methodology, training information generated with a reduced number of harmonic excitations is used to construct the tire hysteretic force emulator using a Neural Network (NN) element. The proposed approach has two stages: a learning stage, followed by an embedding of the learned model into the quarter car model. The learning related main challenge stems from the attempt to capture with the NN element the behavior of a hysteretic element whose response depends on its loading history. The methodology is demonstrated in conjunction with a simple nonlinear quarter vehicle system as well as an ADAMS based model that uses a complex tire element. The results obtained with the surrogate model prove to be accurate and are obtained at a fraction of the CPU time required to handle the original models. The approach proposed is anticipated to be useful for reducing the duration of vehicle simulations, or when a tire model is not available but experimental data can be used to generate a surrogate model.