Development of a Specific Durability Test Cycle for a Commercial Vehicle Based on Real Customer Usage

Every class of commercial vehicle has an entirely different usage pattern based on customer application and needs. To perform accurate durability testing, these prototypes should run on real customer usage locations and loading conditions for the target life. However, this is time consuming and not practical, hence resulting in Proving Ground (PG) testing. It is also known that a standard PG durability cycle cannot be valid for every class of vehicle and every application. So a statistical approach was followed to develop an accelerated durability test cycle based on in-house PG test surfaces in order to match the real customer usage to the durability target life.

This paper summarizes the methodology to develop Durability Validation test cycles for commercial vehicle based on the work carried out on a heavy duty tipper and an intermediate commercial vehicle.