Trends in Modelling Techniques for Vehicle Performance Investigation

Modelling and sinulation have been the basic tools to approach complex systems design since a long time. The only constraints put on their utility are the ability of the designer to catch the significant portion of a system and to describe it in mathematically consistent terms and the availability of powerful simulation tools able to solve the system of equations. It does not mean that the model must be perfect, but that it must describe all relevant phenomena with an acceptable, or at least known, degree of approximation. In the past, the major limitations to the wide use of simulation in soil-vehicle interaction were the intrinsic complexity of soil modelling, soil-vehicle interaction and the availability of data mainly in form of empirical (or heuristic) representation. New modelling techniques, taking advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods, the new generation of powerful computers and modern simulation packages which reduces the time and efforts spent in programming, have opened a completely new scenario to the approach to vehicle performance investigation.