Accelerated Vibration Durability Testing of a Pickup Truck Rear Bed

A test method for road load durability testing of the rear bed of a pickup truck is presented in this article. The purpose of this test method is to reduce the need for full vehicle durability for confirmation testing of the rear bed. As part of the study, a bench test stand was also designed and fabricated. To evaluate the accuracy of the developed method, confirmation tests were carried out. Comparison of the confirmation durability test data (using the developed method) and the vehicle level test data yielded a high level of correlation between the two. This proved that for pickup truck rear beds, a road load durability test could be performed on a component level vibration test.