I created this Vehicle Traction force Calculator during my "vehicle engineering" module I did when I studied Mechanical Engineering ...MANY YEARS AGO ;)
There are 4 main forces one should consider when designing/conceptualizing a vehicle namely:
- Aerodynamic Drag
- Rolling Resistance
- Resistance due to Gradient (basically gravity sucks)
- Force due to Acceleration of the vehicle
The sum of these 4 Forces make up the traction force and that is basically your Force budget that you design against. This is a very basic concept and does take into account assumptions (which I will discuss in this read-me when I have some time) but it is still an excellent approximation of the force.
I have also created a button which pushes "Typical Values" for some of the values necessary to calculate the vehicle traction force to help get quick ballpark figures. The typical values are exactly what they suggest; using them will give you very close estimations to actual measured data from your projects/designs/tests.
Notes:
1) To all the car enthusiasts out there, this is not going to help you design your own car
2) I designed this tool for myself as a free/open source alternative ('coz MatLab and such applications are HELLA EXPENSIVE). This is to do quick calculations for my work
4) I am sharing this in the hopes that I can save some other engineers a bit of time. "Time is money", as they say...
3) This is a droplet in an ocean of applications/scripts/tools I'm developing which includes: Vehicle Models for large data, Driving Cycles and even some calcuations in the electric powertrain space.
So Stay tuned. Honestly, the more attention this gets the more I will be motivated to improve on existing and add more stuff.