Empirical Study of Vehicle Parameters and Optimization for Roll, Pitch, Bounce and Dive Behavior on Commercial Vehicles

The primary factors influencing vehicle's dynamic behavior are the vehicle hard point definition, driver behavior and road inputs. The more the latter two are random and incorrigible in nature, the former one is quantifiable and can be controlled from designer's standpoint.

In this paper, we have made an attempt to set targets to the vehicle hard point definition and thereby to optimize the vehicle for better ride behavior. This approach hence helped to converge to vehicle specifications set fundamentally designed to respond to random operating conditions and driving behavior intelligently.

The work also involves study of various methodologies to predict roll, pitch, bounce and dive behaviors on a typical commercial passenger vehicle and is concluded by a sensitivity analysis to understand significance of these hard points on vehicle's real time behavior.