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Catamarans provide vast deck space, high thrust efficiency, and excellent transverse stability, however, in rough conditions they can be susceptible to deck slamming from head seas or bow diving in following seas and a pitch-roll coupling effect that can lead to uncomfortable corkscrew motion under bow-quartering seas. A new class of catamaran called Wave-Adaptive Modular Vessels (WAM-V™) aims to help mitigate oceanic input from the cabin by allowing for the relative motion of components not common to classic catamaran design. This thesis presents a set of multi-body dynamics simulation models created for two active WAM-Vs™ along with analysis on their suspension characteristics. Both models provide conclusive and realistic results, with the final model being validated against on-water testing data from a 12-ft unmanned prototype WAM-V. The first of these simulations serves primarily as a tool to evaluate WAM-V™ response characteristics with respect to a variety of parametric variations. The modeling environment is highlighted along with details of the parametric simulation and how it was created. The results fall in line with our expectations and are presented along with analysis of the sensitivity of each parameter at three longitudinal locations. The final simulation attempts to model the response of a 12-ft unmanned surface vessel (USV) prototype of the WAM-V™ configuration. Testing data is collected, processed, and applied to the model for validation of its prediction accuracy. The results of the sea tests indicate that the simulation model performs well in predicting USV motions at sea. Future considerations for testing WAM-Vs™ can include changes in suspension and mass parameters as well as limiting particular degrees-of-freedom by making their joints rigid. / Master of Science

The work presented in this thesis is dedicated to the study of transient tyre dynamics and how these influence the dynamic behaviour of the vehicle and its driveline, with the main focus being on low-to-zero speed manoeuvres such as pull-away events. The bulk of the work focuses on the amalgamation of the hitherto disparate fields of driveline modelling and detailed tyre modelling. Several tyre models are employed and their relative advantages and disadvantages analysed. The observed dynamic behaviour is correlated to the inherent structure of each tyre model in order for the most appropriate for driveline studies to be identified. The main simulation studies are split into two parts: the first comprises a study into isolated driveline dynamics; where the yaw, pitch and roll behaviours of the vehicle body are neglected. A relatively detailed driveline model with an open differential is used with tyre models of increasing complexity with the aim of determining when increased model detail fails to increase the accuracy of the results. The second part is concerned with the study of how the dynamics of the vehicle body and suspension affect tyre model performance and associated effects on the driveline behaviour. For this, the driveline and tyre models are incorporated into a full six degree-of-freedom vehicle model with full suspension effects. Frequency migration on low-μ surfaces is successfully explained via the decoupling of the vehicle and driveline inertias. Frequencies observed in FFT analyses of the simulation results correspond to those obtained through eigen-analysis of appropriately modified state-space models with varying degrees of coupling that reflect the vehicle travelling on uniform low- or split-μ surfaces. The main finding of the thesis is that this decoupling theory can also be applied to high-speed take-off manoeuvres, as it is the position along the tyre slip-force curve that dictates decoupling; i.e. if the curve has saturated. This leads to the effective traction stiffness being zero, which modifies the equations of motion and subsequently the system eigenvalues. A series of measurements are taken in order to verify the findings from the simulation work. Manoeuvres analogous to those simulated are carried out. It is found that only the simulation of split-μ conditions is necessary, as the results from the low-μ test show a similar pattern to those seen on the split-μ surface.