An Advanced Approach for Predicting and Assessing the Driver’s Response to Natural Crosswind

„A passenger car’s crosswind behavior significantly contributes to the customer’s subjective evaluation of driving comfort and safety. Globalized markets and increasing portfolios require shortened development cycles. At the same time customer expectations regarding performance and technical maturity of the product >>automobile<< need to be met to the full extent. This creates an increasing demand for methods and tools which allow replacing time and cost intensive testing by a digital design process. With respect to crosswind behavior this should include the evaluation of the closed-loop system driver-vehicle.
In this work, a fully simulation-based approach for predicting and assessing the driver's response under crosswind conditions is described. Hereby, the driver-vehicle interaction under natural stochastic crosswind can be evaluated without the need for physical testing. This provides a tool for predicting the customer's subjective evaluation in a very early stage of the development process."