Modeling of a Racing Car with Modelica’s Multi-Body Library

In this article the modular modeling of the 3-dimensional mechanics of a racing car is discussed, see figure 1 for a typical representative. The model is described with a new Modelica library for modeling of multi-body systems. This approach has the advantage that it is straightforward to built up the system in a hierarchical way from basic building blocks, such as a suspension or a wheel, which are in turn defined with elements of the multi-body library. The overall model itself is a component which has 1D-connectors to drive the wheels and to steer the car. Using the standard 1D-mechanics libraries of Modelica it is then easy to add the powertrain of the car. This racing car model is mainly utilized to get experience with the handling of complex vehicle models in Modelica and Dymola [2] (component structuring, combining different libraries, symbolic transformation, efficiency of simulation).