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The area of vehicle handling falls under the more general area of vehicle dynamics. Handling is used to describe the effectiveness of a vehicle to change direction and negotiate corners. Handling is also the driver’s perception of the vehicle’s cornering behaviour. From these descriptions it is evident that handling has both a subjective and objective aspect to it. This paper deals primarily with the objective understanding of handling. Through the use of multibody dynamics software, the handling of a typical Formula SAE race car is computationally modelled and critical parameters are evaluated. The majority of these parameters are related to suspension geometry which is analysed using multibody kinematics software. The effects of these suspension parameters are discussed. Through simulation of simple steady state and transient cornering, the vehicle’s response to altering the suspension parameters is examined. The vehicle is then optimised in IPG CarMaker™ using the Taguchi approach.

The Formula SAE and Formula Student competitions, held every year in the USA and UK, challenge teams of engineering students to design and build a small single-seater racing car. The University of Leeds has entered teams into these competitions for the past four years and has developed an award winning hybrid monocoque chassis design. The design enables a light, stiff and extremely safe chassis to be produced at a reasonable manufacturing cost. A chassis which is torsionally stiff enables a desirable roll moment distribution to be achieved for good handling balance. A chassis which can absorb high energy impacts whilst controlling the rate of deceleration will increase the likelihood of drivers surviving a crash without injury. This paper describes how Finite Element Analysis (FEA) techniques have been used to investigate both the torsional stiffness and crashworthiness of the chassis and how physical materials testing has been used to ensure the results are accurate.