Methodology to Quantitatively Evaluate the Secondary Ride Characteristics of a Vehicle

The Ride Comfort has always been an important attribute of a vehicle that gets trade-off with handling characteristics of a vehicle. However, to cater the growing customer requirements for better ride comfort in a vehicle without compromising on other attributes, evaluating and achieving optimal ride comfort has become a significant process in the vehicle development. In the current engineering capability and virtual engineering simulations, creating an accurate and real time model to predict ride comfort of a vehicle is a challenging task. The qualitative evaluation of ride attributes has always been the proven conventional method to finalize the requirements of a vehicle. However, quantitative evaluation of vehicle ride characteristics benefits in terms of target setting during vehicle development process and in robust validation of the final intended product against its specifications.

Many approaches have been put forward by different studies in this field but a little has been comprehended on specific ride attributes of a vehicle. This paper attempts to quantify few of the critical secondary ride parameters of a vehicle such as choppiness, shake and rolling plushness and compare it with standard ISO method. This study compares the secondary ride characteristics of two vehicles at identified speeds and road profiles with accelerometers located at steering, seat base and floor. The Inertial Navigation System (I.N.S.) has been configured to the vehicle Centre of Gravity (C.G.) for capturing the acceleration in translational (vehicle vertical axis) and rotational (vehicle pitch axis) axis. The vibration data has been analyzed and the objective results have a correlation with the qualitative evaluation and also provide insights about how these characteristics are perceived subjectively.