Porsche vehicle dynamics development – Virtual approval of car model derivatives in collaboration with road testing

Nowadays car manufacturers tend to increase the number of model variants in order to offer to the customer a wider range of “customized” vehicles. On the one hand this increased variety is driven by the desire to distinguish the car models from the body style point of view. On the other hand there is often also a wide range of technical differences between the car models like drive layout, combustion engine specifications, hybrid concepts, suspension systems and others. Porsche has a long history of offering sports car models with a big number of car derivatives. From the driving behavior point of view, i.e. vehicle dynamics, steering feel and ride comfort, such a diversification requires a thorough analysis and approval of the various models in order to guarantee a high-level handling performance. Virtual methods can help to cope with such an increased number of car variants and/or non-availability of real car specifications during the development phase but this requires a lot of experience and smart approaches in order to combine the virtual results with real life and draw the right conclusions. In this paper we want to give a general overview of combined vehicle dynamics testing and simulation approaches which are used to guarantee maximum performance for the example of a front-engine luxury sports sedan. This process is thought to be straightforward and to allow a deep understanding of the relationships between the component properties and their influence on the driving behavior of the vehicle.