Recently, application of a Multi-axis road simulator has been studied to improve reproducibility of vehicle running, however the system is complicated and expensive due to the large number of vibration axis. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the evaluation object and balance the evaluation accuracy with the test efficiency appropriately.
In this study, we have developed a method for efficient fatigue reliability evaluation of an off-road motorcycle with the road simulator. We focused on the simulation of a jump section of a track because it had been clarified that the fatigue damage in the jump section accounts for the most of the fatigue damage to the vehicle in one lap on the track.
To be specific, we used the following methods in the simulation:
- 1
Simulating the form of stress wave in the jump section with the front and rear suspensions of the vehicle in the supposed rigid state.
- 2
Shortening the endurance time of the road simulator by repeating the vibration acquired in the jump section where the high load accumulates in a short period of time.
- 3
Balancing evenly the overall endurance time on the front and rear sides of the vehicle by adjusting the fatigue damage on the both sides.
By using the above three methods, the endurance time of the road simulator was reduced to less than half of that of the conventional durability test on the road. We also confirmed that the system was simple, however that the evaluation accuracy was high.