Modeling and parameters sensitivity analysis of lightweight vehicles considering payload variations

This paper presents a 6 degree-of-freedom lightweight vehicle model considering payload variations. Lightweight vehicles have great advantages in fuel saving and emission reduction thanks to the significantly reduced total mass compared to the traditional vehicles. The reduced mass and the payload variations, however, may also change the vehicle dynamics significantly. A lightweight vehicle model considering payload mass as well as center of mass location parameter variations is developed. The proposed model is then compared with those with and without payload. In order to analyze the effect of payload changes, the sensitivity of vehicle state parameters is simulated with direct method. Simulation results indicate that parameters are sensitive to vehicle states.