An overview of various new road profile quality evaluation criteria: part 2

Abstract

This is the second part of an article which correlates road-induced impacts on vehicle to a selection of road assessment criteria. The impacts on tyre, suspension and radiator wear are studied by running a multibody semi-trailer truck model on 270 road profiles. The model accurateness is assessed by comparing international roughness index (IRI)–impact relationships to those published in the literature. A new profile rating method uses wavelength content to predict the impacts of a specific profile on driver and passenger health and safety, truck wear and fuel consumption. It is concluded that (1) medium wavelengths severely impact fuel consumption, component wear and safety; (2) simple, two-point and four-point indices yield similar results, but the more the points the better the correlation; (3) the IRI is good at predicting general trends in road-induced vehicular impact but is weak for specific impacts and (4) tyre wear correlates linearly while component wear requires quadratic correlations.

Keywords::

• road roughness
• IRI
• quarter car
• fatigue
• vehicle wear
• wavelength

Acknowledgements

The valuable involvement of Michelin^®, Politecnico di Milano, Freightliner^®, Manac^®, the Association du camionnage du Québec and the MTQ is recognised.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to recognise the financial support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the partners of the i3C industrial research chair.