Advanced bushing script program in MSC ADAMS

Abstract: The thesis focuses on investigating and optimizing a bushing script implemented as a tool in MSC ADAMS/Car. The study provides an insight on the representation of a rubber bushing and identify parameters which can be used to define the properties of a bushing in a simulation environment such as ADAMS/Car. The tool being studied here can be used to implement different kind of bushings such as a hydro bushing and a general rubber bushing, but optimization was implemented for the rubber bushing only. With an increasing reliance on Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools in the designing process, it is necessary that the vehicle behaviour can be predicted without relying on physical testing. CAE tools reduces the need of prototypes and provides a faster approach to designing vehicles. MSC ADAMS/Car is one such tool, which has been used here to predict the vehicle dynamic behaviour, which will influence the ride, handling and comfort characteristics of the vehicle. Rubber bushings, which have been studied here, have a significant contribution to the overall stiffness of the vehicle and as such, it is imperative that the tool being used here, is accurate and makes the designing process easy. The rubber bushing can be imagined to be a combination of a non-linear elastic spring, a frequency dependent Maxwell component and an amplitude dependent frictional element. In order to ease the design of the bushing properties, a reduced number of input properties are used to calculate the bushing properties internally. While trying to validate the force hysteresis loop obtained through the model with the measured data, it was seen that the accuracy was quite poor for the model when loading it with dynamic loads corresponding to amplitudes of0.2 mm and lower. The quasi-static loading and dynamic loading above 0.2 mm is shown to have a satisfactory accuracy when compared to the measured data.