Road Modeling

There are many means for modeling roads that differ from one tire model to another, but in the end a road model is just a representation of the surface that the tire runs over. In general the height of the road varies with the longitudinal and lateral distance from the road origin. For 2D roads, the height only varies based on longitudinal distance from the road origin, and the road is infinite in the lateral direction. For 3D roads, the height and slope of the road varies with both the longitudinal and lateral distance from the road origin. 3D road models are typically finite and depending on the road model, a tire that reaches the edge of the road may fall off into space taking the vehicle with it.

For all tire models, the description of the road is stored in an external file. Hence, you select a road file for each tire in your model, except for the road course drive event where you select one road in the event user interface for all tires in your model. But you must to take care to select a road file that is compatible.

To help you select road files that are compatible with the tire model, we store tire and road files that are compatible in the same folder in the installation folder named for the tire model (for example, …hwdesktop\hw\mdl\autoentities\properties\Tires\FIALA). In addition, when you select a road file, MotionView checks if the road is compatible with the selected tire model.

In addition, a set of 2D and 3D example roads are provided that are compatible with all tire models supported in MotionSolve. You can find these example road files in your installation here: hwdesktop\hw\mdl\autoentities\properties\Tires\ALTAIR_ROADS.

Finally, you can find documentation for the various road models at the links below.