Development of a Scale Vehicle Dynamics Test Bed

Research in the area of vehicle dynamics often requires that virtual models be correlated with test data or control systems be implemented within hardware. However, the prohibitive cost associated with a proper testing program has relegated the majority of research in these areas to virtual simulation. The purpose of this research was to develop a low cost vehicle dynamics test bed, which could be used to investigate the full operational range of vehicle handling. A scaled approach, analogous to wind tunnel testing, was used in order to make predictions about a system based on observations obtained from a scale model. The following test bed is unique since it is untethered from the acquisition system allowing for a wider range of test manoeuvres to be used. Results obtained from the test bed verified the usefulness of a scaled approach with good correlation being achieved between linear handling models and test data.