Replication of Near-Limit Lateral Vehicle Dynamics in a Four DOF Driving Simulator

The requirements for a Motion Cueing Algorithm (MCA) are highly use case dependent. Most driving simulators focus on urban or highway scenarios where little attention is paid to near-limit vehicle operation. In professional motorsport, this state is omnipresent and it is accompanied by sustained accelerations above 10 m/s 2. In order to allow racing drivers consistent exploitation of vehicle performance, motion cues are required which provide detailed information on vehicle states and stability. Within this work, yaw rotation and lateral acceleration are considered to replicate characteristics of near-limit lateral vehicle dynamics. Existing approaches are reviewed and evaluated on a theoretical basis and a novel MCA is proposed. The motion reference generation is based on the separation of quasi-static and dynamic vehicle states. As a result, the reference tracking becomes a feasible subtask of the MCA for motorsport applications and tuning parameters retain a physical meaning. The simulation based study indicates qualitatively similar yaw rate demands compared to existing MCAs. Opposite to this, the similarity of vehicle and simulator response in terms of yaw acceleration characteristics is increased by 12 %. To evaluate these findings with regard to drivers’ vehicle state anticipation, an experimental study design is proposed.