Lightweight dynamic vehicle models oriented to vehicle electrification

The paper deals with the development of fast and lightweight vehicle dynamics models oriented to the vehicle electrification. Two models are created, as they are concerned with different accuracy levels. The first one is very essential: it consists of three dynamics, that is full vehicle, front wheels and rear wheels; regularised Coulomb friction model is adopted. The second model is more advanced since it comprehends the vertical dynamics due to the suspension system and tyre friction model comes from Pacejka’s theory. The dynamics models are subsequently compared with a very sophisticated and accurate model developed thanks to Chrono::Engine (C::E): because C::E is a powerful and reliable software, this process can be considered as a first validation of the more essential vehicle descriptions. Afterwards, models are connected to an electric powertrain to evaluate the effects of the different mechanical models with respect to the same electric system; this also aims to estimate the characteristic quantities of the electric domain