Multi-body simulation software in the study of two-wheeled road vehicles

The manual derivation of the equations of motion of two wheeled road vehicles is not practical if one wishes to study complex modes of operation such as cornering phenomena. We establish the feasibility of an automated approach to dynamic model generation using multi-body simulation software. The straight running equations of motion are derived using AUTOSIM and the eigenvalues of the linearised model are benchmarked against those found by Sharp (1994) using a manual method.