Towards T.R.I.C.K. 2.0 – A tool for the evaluation of the vehicle performance through the use of an advanced sensors system

In the last years, the tire technological development has played a fundamental role in motorsport and in automotive industry. The tire contact patch forces have a great influence on the vehicle behavior, so their correct estimation is a crucial task to understand how to improve the car performance. In order to identify the tire interaction characteristic, it is also necessary to use a procedure that allows the correct evaluation of the slip angles in the different operating conditions. This paper presents an evolution of the T.R.I.C.K. tool developed by the UniNa vehicle dynamics research group. In the first version of this tool an 8 degree of freedom vehicle model has been implemented and, starting from the experimental data acquired, the T.R.I.C.K. calculates the interaction forces and the tire slips using the equilibrium equations. Using more car parameters and further data obtained from track sessions and dedicated tests, in the presented release of the tool, new formulations have been developed for a more accurate calculation of the tire-road forces. The effectiveness of the treatments is assessed using experimental data and the simulator outputs. The new formulations introduced in this paper allows, depending on the availability of additional vehicle data and acquisition sensors, to estimate the interaction forces with different and more accurate methodologies than the equilibrium equations, while retaining very reduced simulation times. In this way it is possible to carry out a more precise study of vehicle dynamics with the possibility of investigating and significantly improving performance.