Predesign of Automotive Independent Suspensions: Implementation as MDesign Calculation Module

Abstract

Implementation of an algorithm as a software module is not an easy task for a mechanical engineer. Usually the design engineer needs to be assisted by a programmer when a new software module is to be designed. The MDesign approach offers a way to create custom calculation modules by the user himself, who in this case is the automotive engineer, using only basic programming knowledge. This paper is focused on the development of a computation software module when the algorithm is already established. It is presented the case of the independent suspension predesign algorithm, but the same way is used for any other mechanical system. The MDesign framework was created for mechanical design and it was extended with a custom component dedicated to automotive engineering. A calculation module consists of program code and data, and is designed to execute an implemented algorithm and to provide the user with some text and graphics information.