Robust Design for Improved Vehicle Handling Under a

In this article, a robust design procedure is applied to achieve improved vehicle handling performance as an integral part of simulation-based vehicle design. Recent developments in the field of robust design optimization and the techniques for creating global approximations of design behaviors are applied to improve the computational efficiency of robust vehicle design built upon sophisticated vehicle dynamic simulations. Our approach is applied to the design of a M916A1 6-wheel tractor / M870A2 3-axle semi-trailer. The results illustrate that the proposed procedure is effective for preventing the rollover of ground vehicles as well as for identifying a design that is not only optimal against the worst maneuver condition but is also robust with respect to a range of maneuver inputs. Furthermore, a comparison is made between a statistical approach and a bi-level optimization approach in terms of their effectiveness in solving robust design problems. NOMENCLATURE x Vector of design variables f(x) Objective function gj(x) Constraint functions kj Constant in worst case analysis mf Mean of the objective function sf Standard deviation of the objective functio