Vehicle Engineering

The motorcycles and personal transportation market is broadly split into occasional leisure use and everyday personal transport sectors. Owners of leisure use vehicles are generally concerned with perceived quality, refinement and performance while everyday transport users require optimal total cost of ownership, reliability and product longevity. Ricardo has the tools, expertise and capability to understand these requirements and interpret them in engineering terms, delivering a total vehicle product which meets and exceeds customer expectations.

A truly world-class capability in motorcycle and personal transportation vehicle systems engineering:

• Concept design, benchmarking , target and attribute setting – integration throughout development using design for manufacture principles and product design data management
• Vehicle, system and component level specification setting and development
• Package design and control including legal and safety requirements, weight distribution and clearance checks
• Component, system, and vehicle level design and validation using state-of-the-art CAE methods including ADAMS dynamic optimization, thermal simulation using WAVE and VECTIS, and VSIM vehicle systems analysis
• Vehicle dynamics optimization and incorporation of active safety technologies
• Suspension, brakes and chassis engineering, and power train integration including fuel, intake, exhaust, cooling systems
• Access to Ricardo’s world-class vehicle NVH team and facilities
• Lightweight structural architecture optimization and application of advanced materials, joining and manufacturing technologies
• Comprehensive prototype build and testing capability including all aspects of calibration and homologation