Development of Generic Frame Testing Methodology by Synthetic Drive File Generation Technique

Frame is one of the vital part of Light & Heavy Commercial vehicle which holds all the parts and testing the frame is not a cost effective as the complete vehicle assembly needs to be tested as the individual testing of frame is not formulated for testing. In the development stage of the vehicle we always seek for a quick, cost effective and reliable methodology so that any modification can be made by identifying the failures. In this paper we have addressed this problem by developing a generic frame test methodology by which the frame can be tested in the preliminary stage of development in a cost effective way and reliable way. The Multi Body Dynamics Simulation was carried out and rig was designed comprising of servo hydraulic actuators. The frame was instrumented to acquire the Field, Event and Torture track data for the formulation and verification of the synthetic drives. Instead of Random Vibration Simulation for the frame simplified events of the bending, oblique bending, and torsion were formulated in the form of Synthetic Drives. These drives were generic and applicable to any frame of the similar category also it can be amplified as per the requirement. Synthetic Drive were generated for a Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) from an OEM. The Synthetic Drives were tested in Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) - Structural Dynamics Lab (SDL) and verified. The Rig Setup and Synthetic Drive Developed showed a good correlation in terms of damage correlation and rig response and a promising & successful step towards Generic Frame Testing for Light & Heavy Commercial Vehicle Frame.