The “ride transfer” characteristic for a motor vehicle is defined as the amplitude ratio of the acceleration response of the vehicle body mass to the force input at the tire/road interface, for a range of forcing frequencies; that is, the ratio is plotted in the frequency domain.
The characteristic is of importance for investigating the effects that changes to vehicle mass, spring, and damping parameters have upon passenger riding comfort both during the design and development of a vehicle.
The paper describes the testing technique, Fourier Transformation theory, and numerical integration, which is used to transform the data logged recordings of the force input transients and acceleration response transients, from the time domain to the frequency domain. Tests are made on a stationary vehicle in the laboratory.
The experimental “ride transfer” characteristics are compared with those obtained for a six degree of freedom mathematical model of the test vehicle.
A study of other experimental techniques which have been used for assessing vehicle riding comfort, together with the established vehicle ride comfort criteria is included.