Vehicle motion engineering
Book, 2026
This book is written for the course “MMF062 Vehicle Motion Engineering” at Chalmers University of Technology. The compendium covers more than what is included in that course; both in terms of subsystem designs and in terms of some teasers for more advanced studies of vehicle dynamics. Therefore, it is also useful for the more advanced courses, such as “TME102 Vehicle Modelling and Control”.
The overall objective of the compendium is to educate engineers that understand and can contribute to development of good motion and energy functionality of vehicles. The compendium focuses on road vehicles, primarily passenger cars and commercial vehicles. Smaller road vehicles, such as bicycles and single-person cars, are only very briefly addressed. It can be mentioned that there exist a lot of ground-vehicle types not covered at all, such as: off-road/construction vehicles, tracked vehicles, horse wagons, hovercrafts, and railway vehicles.
Functions are needed for requirement setting, design and verification. The overall order within the compendium is that models/methods/tools needed to understand each function are placed before the functions. Chapters 3-5 describes (complete vehicle) “functions”, organised after vehicle motion directions:
· Chapter 3: Longitudinal dynamics
· Chapter 4: Lateral dynamics
· Chapter 5: Vertical dynamics
Chapter 1 introduces automotive industry and the overall way of working there and defines required pre-knowledge from “product-generic” engineering, e.g. modelling of dynamic systems.
Chapter 2 also describes the subsystems relevant for vehicle dynamics:
• Wheels and Tyre
• Suspension
• Propulsion
• Braking System
• Steering System
• Environment Sensing System
The compendium is released in a new version each year, around October, which is the version you read now. A "latest draft" is more frequently updated and often includes some more, sometimes unfinished, material: file://file00.ita.chalmers.se/home/bengtja/www/VehicleMotionEngineering.pdf
The overall objective of the compendium is to educate engineers that understand and can contribute to development of good motion and energy functionality of vehicles. The compendium focuses on road vehicles, primarily passenger cars and commercial vehicles. Smaller road vehicles, such as bicycles and single-person cars, are only very briefly addressed. It can be mentioned that there exist a lot of ground-vehicle types not covered at all, such as: off-road/construction vehicles, tracked vehicles, horse wagons, hovercrafts, and railway vehicles.
Functions are needed for requirement setting, design and verification. The overall order within the compendium is that models/methods/tools needed to understand each function are placed before the functions. Chapters 3-5 describes (complete vehicle) “functions”, organised after vehicle motion directions:
· Chapter 3: Longitudinal dynamics
· Chapter 4: Lateral dynamics
· Chapter 5: Vertical dynamics
Chapter 1 introduces automotive industry and the overall way of working there and defines required pre-knowledge from “product-generic” engineering, e.g. modelling of dynamic systems.
Chapter 2 also describes the subsystems relevant for vehicle dynamics:
• Wheels and Tyre
• Suspension
• Propulsion
• Braking System
• Steering System
• Environment Sensing System
The compendium is released in a new version each year, around October, which is the version you read now. A "latest draft" is more frequently updated and often includes some more, sometimes unfinished, material: file://file00.ita.chalmers.se/home/bengtja/www/VehicleMotionEngineering.pdf
Braking
Vehicle motion engineering
Vehicle propulsion
Vehicle motion control
Vehicle dynamics
Wheels and tyres
Vehicle engineering
Ground vehicles
Suspension
Environment sensing
Road vehicles
Energy systems modelling
Steering
Vehicle modelling
Modelica
Author
Bengt Jacobson
Vehicle Engineering and Autonomous Systems
Driving Forces
Sustainable development
Areas of Advance
Transport
Energy
Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Vehicle and Aerospace Engineering
Control Engineering
Infrastructure
ReVeRe (Research Vehicle Resource)
Learning and teaching
Pedagogical work
DOI
10.5281/zenodo.23164683
Publisher
Chalmers University of Technology