Using Road Surface Measurements for Real Time Driving Simulation

Road surface irregularity is known to effect vehicle NVH responses. When modeling vehicle NVH, it is desirable to have high-resolution measurements of the road surface to use as road input. For typical NVH modal tire models, the road surface sampling rate will not be an issue because several points on the tire patch (center line) are used to determine the road surface irregularity. The single point follower tire model, often used in real time driving simulation, uses only one point to establish the tire patch. In this case, the sampling interval of the road surface can effect the resulting excitation of vehicle vibrations. In this paper, measured road surfaces are studied in terms of the vehicle dynamic point follower tire model. Among the issues to be discussed are: the vehicle speed, the tire patch length, the road surface sampling rate and averaging procedures. In this study, a procedure to define the road roughness surfaces usable for driving simulations will be identified. A vehicle model is used to validate the procedure through comparisons with vehicle measured vibration data. Email Addresses: Ben Kao [email protected] Bruce Artz: [email protected]