Generic Road Profile for Durability Tests

This work has been done on the premise that, since the Servo-hydraulic Four Poster is a Road simulator and on road the road inputs at tire and do not change with vehicles, a simulated road profile is expected to be valid for a family of vehicles with similar gross vehicle weights, body construction, wheel-base and track, and suspension systems.

To prove this hypothesis, three vehicles with such similar characteristics were subjected to both track tests for vehicle response data collection and Four Poster tests for vehicle response data correlation. Analysis of the data showed that within engineering accuracies a “generic” road profile could be defined for a family of vehicles. Durability tests with this generic profile showed that even the severity level matched with that during road tests as evidenced by similar life of failed parts.

This generic road profile can now serve as a major cost and time saving tool in new vehicle model development programs in applicable categories.