Simulation of a sudden tire inflation pressure loss in a full vehicle context as a validation scenario for CAE based ESC development

Sudden pressure loss can lead to vehicle instability and - without aid of systems such as e.g. Electronic Stability Control (ESC) - to an emergency situation, possibly resulting in an accident. But also with an ESC system such a situation is an unusual (unstandardized) application case, because the vehicle system (car+tires) properties change very rapidly during the sudden pressure loss, which leads to a very high dynamic response in the system and moreover to a very fuzzy and unclear description of the vehicle system. From this point of view, a proper validation and verification of an ESC system for such an application seems to have a high safety relevancy. The authors have set up a simulation case to simulate a sudden tire inflation pressure loss and its consequences to the car stability. Using this simulation setup enables a CAE engineer to pre-develop ESC systems and/or to validate and test these for a realistic and relevant use case.