3856 Weight Management of Ground Vehicles: A Mass Properties Control Framework for Road, Off-Road, and Special-Purpose Platforms

Paper

Abstract

Ground vehicles are frequently managed by curb mass, gross vehicle mass, or payload, but those scalar measures do not adequately control the engineering risk created by the distribution and maturity of mass. This paper presents a practical mass properties engineering framework for weight management of ground vehicles, including passenger cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, electric bicycles, construction machines, special-purpose vehicles, and tracked platforms. The objective is to convert weight management from late-stage reporting into a closed-loop control process that supports architecture decisions, homologation, stability, braking, steering, energy use, payload, and lifecycle configuration control. The proposed approach combines top-down allocation of mass, center of gravity, axle loads, wheel loads, inertias, and reserves with bottom-up roll-ups from computer-aided design, bills of material, supplier data, and physical measurement. It distinguishes current mass from forecast mass, mass growth allowance from uncertainty, and certification limits from engineering margins. The method uses a defined mass state, a vehicle-family-specific risk register, a gate-based verification plan, and an escalation path whenever not-to-exceed values, axle reactions, center-of-gravity limits, or stability constraints are threatened. The central finding is that the best ground-vehicle program is not necessarily the lightest program; it is the program whose mass properties are controlled at the right level of maturity for each decision. For passenger cars and performance vehicles, the dominant risks are variant accretion, battery placement, unsprung mass, and inertia drift. For trucks and buses, payload, axle-load reserve, bodybuilder integration, roof-mounted systems, and rollover sensitivity dominate. For two-wheel vehicles, rider, battery, and luggage locations must be treated as part of the system. For construction and tracked vehicles, implement position, ballast, soil pressure, and transport configuration require explicit mass states. The paper concludes with an implementation checklist, for example status record, and peer-review checklist intended for adaptation to specific ground-vehicle programs. Keywords: mass properties engineering; weight management; ground vehicles; center of gravity; axle loads; moments of inertia; mass growth; uncertainty; vehicle development; verification.