Title: A fatigue failure formula and a new measure of the roughness of a terrain profile

Authors: T. C. Sun; D. Gorsich; M. Chaika; Jinfeng Wei; S. Qiu; K. Alyass

Addresses: Department of Mathematics, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA ' US Army RDECOM-TARDEC, Warren, Michigan, Warren, MI USA ' Department of Mathematics, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA ' Department of Mathematics, Maryville University of St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA ' Department of Mathematics, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA ' Department of Mathematics, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA

Abstract: There have been complaints that the root mean square (RMS) does not describe the roughness of terrain profiles well. Similar complaints can be made about the international roughness index (IRI) as a measurement of roughness of terrain profiles. In this paper, by using the rainflow count of the oscillations of the terrain profiles, we shall first propose a fatigue failure formula and then we shall modify it to define a new measure of roughness of terrain profiles. We shall show that this new measure can describe the roughness better than the RMS and the IRI and hence, can be used, either independently or in conjunction with RMS and IRI, as a new measure of roughness of terrain profiles.

Keywords: terrain roughness; terrain modelling; fatigue failure; terrain profiles; roughness measures.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.2014.058490

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 2014 Vol.64 No.2/3/4, pp.121 - 136

Accepted: 22 Oct 2012
Published online: 30 Oct 2014 *

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