Adams Car
Adams Car, part of the Adams® 2024.1 suite of software, is a specialized environment for modeling vehicles. It allows you to create virtual prototypes of vehicle subsystems and analyze the virtual prototypes much like you would analyze the physical prototypes.
Using Adams Car, you can quickly create assemblies of suspensions and full vehicles, and then analyze them to understand their performance and behavior.
You create assemblies in Adams Car by defining vehicle subsystems, such as front and rear suspensions, steering gears, anti-roll bars, and bodies. You base these subsystems on their corresponding standard Adams Car templates. For example, Adams Car includes templates for double-wishbone suspension, MacPherson strut suspension, rack-and-pinion steering, and so on.
If you have expert-user access, you can also base your subsystems on custom templates that you create using the Adams Car Template Builder.
When you analyze an assembly, Adams Car applies the analysis inputs that you specify. For example, for a suspension analysis you can specify inputs to:
■Move the wheels through bump-rebound travel and measure the toe, camber, wheel rate, roll rate, and side-view swing arm length.
■Apply lateral load and aligning torque at the tire contact path and measure the toe change and lateral deflection of the wheel.
■Rotate the steering wheel from lock to lock and measure the steer angles of the wheels and the amount of Ackerman, that is, the difference between the left and right wheel-steer angles.
Based on the analysis results, you can quickly alter the suspension geometry or the spring rates and analyze the suspension again to evaluate the effects of the alterations. For example, you can quickly change a rear suspension from a trailing-link to a multi-link topology to see which yields the best handling characteristics for your vehicle.
Once you complete the analysis of your model, you can share your work with others. You can also print plots of the suspension characteristics and vehicle dynamic responses. In addition, you can access other users' models without overwriting their data.