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This paper discusses the benefits of truck simulation for ride and handling tuning at product development. Virtual simulation can guide the conception of new vehicles to a better "first guess" of dynamics characteristics, providing calibrated options to define parameters for springs, dampers and anti-roll bars, closer to the desired condition. TruckSim™, from Mechanical Simulation, was the chosen software due to its user-friendly interface, fast modeling and post-processing that matches with challenging product time-to-market. The scope of analysis is to evaluate/compare virtual results against subjective/objective tests on real prototypes, in order to proof software correlativity. The first step was to develop the vehicle model, using 3D CAD models information, data acquired from real prototypes and product specifications. The chosen vehicle was a 9-ton 4X2 rigid truck.

Due to the practice of lifting the rear suspension of heavy trucks, adopted by some end-users in Brazil, and in order to supply theoretical propositions to the manufacturers of suspension components for product improvement, this work describes stability and lateral dynamics tests simulations of a 4×2 rigid truck with 15000 kg of gross vehicle weight (GVW) and with changes in its originals leaf springs, predicting its dynamics responses in cornering and safety against rollover when unloaded and loaded at its GVWR limit.