We provide an ice friction model for vehicle dynamics of a two-man bobsled which can be used for driver evaluation and in a driver-in-the-loop simulator. Longitudinal friction is modeled by combining experimental results with finite element simulations to yield a correlation between contact pressure and friction. To model lateral friction, we collect data from 44 bobsleigh runs using special sensors. Non-linear regression is used to fit a bob-specific one-track vehicle dynamics model to the data. It is applied in driving simulation and enables a novel method for bob driver evaluation. Bob drivers with various levels of experience are investigated. It shows that a similar performance of the top drivers results from different driving styles.
@article{arxiv.2109.07252,
title = {Modeling Ice Friction for Vehicle Dynamics of a Bobsled with Application in Driver Evaluation and Driving Simulation},
author = {Julian von Schleinitz and Lukas Wörle and Michael Graf and Andreas Schröder},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.07252},
year = {2021}
}