What VehicleLab currently does
VehicleLab runs a transparent passive quarter-car ride study directly in your browser. The model has two vertical degrees of freedom: sprung-body motion and unsprung wheel-side motion. The included preset is generic, not a named production vehicle.
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.
About two minutes
Quick start
- 1Open VehicleLab Studio.
The generic default study executes automatically.
- 2Review the default vehicle parameters.
Mass, stiffness, and damping inputs use SI units.
- 3Review the default half-sine road input.
Note its start time, amplitude, and duration.
- 4Open Advanced settings.
Review the zero initial state, 5 s duration, and requested 0.001 s RK4 step.
- 5Choose “Run study”.
The status reports when the browser Worker completes.
- 6Inspect the headline metrics.
Read acceleration, suspension travel, and tire deflection together.
- 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 defaults” when needed.
This restores and reruns the generic study.
- 10Save the definition and export the evidence.
Open Project to add context and export a portable project file. Completed Study results provide exact-channel CSV, per-plot PNG, and local Engineering Report actions.
About five minutes
Guided study: Explore suspension-damping trade-offs
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
- Reset the 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 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 Show motion playback.
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 defaults” to restore and rerun the generic preset.
The response magnitude looks unexpected
Check every unit first. The Studio uses metres, kilograms, seconds, newtons per metre, and newton-seconds per metre.