In Lab Truck Cab and Cab Suspension Durability Validation

Recent technological advances in improving truck driver’s comfort and safety, the truck cab BIW and cab suspension has undergone through various technical upgrades, right from rigidly mount cab to full floating cab. This has offered a challenge for development of test facility and procedure for quick fatigue life validation and testing. In conventional vehicle development, the fatigue life of the cab and cab suspension components was evaluated by subjecting a vehicle to torture track test, with a prerequisite of availability of fully built prototype vehicle. In addition, the time lost in fixing and rectifying the failures of parts, which are of not interest, is very high. In view of these major drawbacks of proving ground test, the need for in lab cab and cab suspension validation test facility and procedure was felt. This was achieved with the use of existing servo hydraulic 4 Poster along with proper restraint system to hold the test buck, which consists of cab and cab suspension mounted on the half cut chassis. The restraint system was optimized to have a good transfer function between drive and response signals and minimum crosstalk between different response channels.

Various cab and cab suspension response signals (i.e. acceleration, force and displacement) were collected on service roads and torture tracks and those were simulated on the test buck. This in lab cab and cab suspension durability test facility has helped us to cut down the development time of semi floating type truck cab and cab suspension.