PERIODIC STEADY STATE RESPONSE OF A LARGE SCALE CITY BUS MODEL WITH NONLINEAR CHARACTERISTICS
Sotirios Natsiavas, Sotirios Natsiavas
A computationally efficient methodology is presented for capturing periodic steady state response of a periodically excited city bus model. First, the equations of motion for each of the components of the bus are set up by ap-plying the finite element method. As a conse-quence of the geometric complexity, the num-ber of the resulting equations is quite high. In addition, the composite model possesses strongly nonlinear characteristics. Therefore, a suitable method is applied originally in order to reduce the dimension of the system. This then allows the application of appropriate numerical methodologies for predicting steady state re-sponse of the nonlinear models examined to periodic road excitation. As a result, selected response quantities are evaluated and presented for characteristic combinations of the bus sus-pension stiffness and damping parameters.