Development of a Simulation for Assessment of Ride Quality of Tractor Semi-Trailers

Providing acceptable ride quality of tractor semi-trailers is essential to their viability in the freight transport business. This paper describes the development of a design tool that may be used to investigate the vertical dynamic response and ride comfort of these vehicles. A 12 degrees-of-freedom (DOF) model of the vertical dynamic response was developed and simulated in MATLAB [1]. The model is analyzed in the frequency domain. The input to the model is a user-specified power spectral density (PSD) of the vertical road irregularities. Outputs include modal frequencies, damping ratios and mode shapes, frequency response functions, PSDs and root mean square (rms) vertical and longitudinal accelerations in 1/3 octave bands. The rms values are compared with the specifications for ride comfort cited in ISO 2631 [2].