Introduction to the RACE Design Guide
The RACE design guide gives an overview of how to design a suspension with RACE software. The articles in this guide are intended to be short and to the point on a specific suspension design topic. Although it is written around the use of RACE to design a suspension system, the topics are general and are a useful source to learn about suspension performance measurement. As this design guide matures, the articles will become a complete knowledge base to use as a reference for suspension design.
What is RACE?
RACE is a specialist multibody dynamics software for virtual suspension Kinematics and Compliance (K&C) testing. Simplified vertical, roll, cornering, traction and braking loads are applied to the suspension system and the response of the system to each is recorded. The simplified inputs allow the force-response interactions of the suspension system to be understood and ultimately tuned.
RACE requires user inputs in the form of suspension hard points, joint types and wheel & tyre dimensions. Once complete the user submits the inputs to a dedicated cloud server for analysis. The server runs the K&C simulation and generates a report to show the performance of the suspension against over 50 Key performance indicators (KPIs). The report is then uploaded to the users account for review.