What VehicleLab currently does
VehicleLab opens with a passive Half Car · 4 DOF model. It represents coupled body heave and pitch plus front and rear unsprung motion under explicit axle roads. Quarter Car · 2 DOF remains available as a simpler reference model. Both presets are generic, not named production vehicles.
The current purpose is engineering exploration and numerical transparency: inputs, equations, solver behavior, result definitions, and evidence boundaries remain visible.
The Studio is organized into three focused modes: Study configures and runs one response, Explore sweeps one physical-parameter range, andCompare evaluates Baseline against Variant A. Only the current workflow occupies the primary workspace. Study and Compare each offer Transient and Frequency analysis; Explore remains focused on transient one-parameter sweeps.
About two minutes
Quick start
- 1Open VehicleLab Studio.
Half Car · 4 DOF and Transient Study are the starting context. No simulation runs until you choose Run Half-Car Study.
- 2Review the default vehicle parameters.
Body, front and rear suspension, and tire inputs use SI units.
- 3Review the front and rear road inputs.
Check the event shape, explicit rear delay, and timing before running.
- 4Open Advanced settings.
Review the zero initial state, 5 s duration, and requested 0.001 s RK4 step.
- 5Choose “Run Half-Car Study”.
The status reports when the browser Worker completes.
- 6Inspect the headline metrics.
Read body acceleration and pitch alongside front and rear suspension travel and tire deflection.
- 7Inspect the synchronized plots.
All result channels share one time base.
- 8Change one input and rerun.
The visible results update only after another completed study.
- 9Choose “Reset half-car defaults” when needed.
This restores the generic model definition; check the resulting evidence state.
- 10Save the definition and export the evidence.
Completed Transient Study Motion also offers Export Videofor a local wide or vertical engineering presentation. Open Data & project to add context and export a portable project definition or completed-result CSV. Use the persistent header action for a local Engineering Report and each plot card for its PNG.
Continue your engineering journey
Choose the next useful question.
The compact Your engineering journey map shows the current workspace and which capabilities have previously completed successfully. It is a map, not a wizard: experienced users can jump directly among Study, Explore, and Compare.
- Frequency Study: find where one suspension amplifies or isolates a normalized road excitation.
- Explore: examine how one damping or stiffness range changes transient response.
- Compare: evaluate Baseline and Variant A in transient time history or on one shared frequency grid.
- Engineering Report: export the active workspace's last completed immutable evidence from the persistent header action.
Journey history is convenience-only browser state. VehicleLab stores only versioned capability IDs—never parameters, project text, or results—and Reset explored status does not change the current engineering workspace.
Continue with Frequency Compare →About five minutes
Guided study: Explore suspension-damping trade-offs
For this simpler Quarter-Car exercise, switch to Quarter Car · 2 DOF first. Start at 1,500 N·s/m, simulate damping from 1,000 to 3,000 N·s/m, and read body acceleration, suspension travel, and tire deflection together. Every candidate uses the same default road, initial state, duration, RK4 step, model, and solver.
1,500 N·s/m
- Select Quarter Car · 2 DOF and reset its generic defaults.
- Choose the Explore mode.
- Confirm suspension damping is 1,500 N·s/m.
1,000–3,000 N·s/m
- Select suspension damping.
- Enter 1,000 minimum, 3,000 maximum, and 9 cases.
- Choose Run deterministic sweep.
- Review the ordered table and five actual-marker plots.
- Compare all four metrics; do not infer a continuous curve between candidates.
- Select an interesting candidate from the table or a plot.
- Optionally export the completed sweep CSV, an individual Explore PNG, or the complete PDF Engineering Report. Each uses the immutable candidate record and remains local.
- Open Data & project, name the study, and choose Export project. Importing that file later restores the Explore definition but deliberately requires a rerun because project JSON contains no old candidate results.
- Choose Use as Variant A, then Run comparison.
- Inspect changed parameters, metric deltas, and overlays; optionally choose Motion.
Lower body acceleration is not automatically a universally better suspension. A candidate can demand more suspension working space or change tire deflection; desirability depends on objectives, constraints, the full transient, and intended use.
Common problems
Vehicle values are rejected
Mass, stiffness, and damping must be finite and greater than zero. Review the accepted range shown below each control.
The road event does not fit
Road start time plus rise or bump duration must not extend beyond the simulation duration.
The requested workload is too large
Duration and requested step may not generate more than 100,001 samples. Shorter steps increase the workload.
Inputs no longer match the visible results
Editable controls can change after a run. The “Current study” summary continues to describe the inputs that generated the visible results; rerun to use edited inputs.
I want the original inputs back
Choose “Reset half-car defaults” for the flagship model, then run again if needed.
The response magnitude looks unexpected
Check every unit first. The Studio uses metres, kilograms, seconds, newtons per metre, and newton-seconds per metre.
Continue learning
Half-Car parameter exploration
Half-Car Transient Explore changes one physical parameter at a time. Inspect completed trade-offs and promote a selected candidate to Compare; no automatic optimization or recommendation is applied.
Half-Car Frequency Study
Half-Car Frequency Study is available in Study → Half Car → Frequency. Transient response describes a road event over time; frequency response describes steady-state harmonic motion across frequency. The validated 4-DOF model retains nine complex responses with explicit rear-road delay and front-road normalization. Completed CSV, PNG and PDF exports preserve evidence; imported projects require rerunning.
Half-Car Frequency Compare
Study → Half Car → Frequency → Compare a design change. Baseline and Variant A use the same harmonic experiment, with explicit physical changes, complex evidence and completed CSV/PNG/PDF exports. Follow the Frequency Compare guide.