Title: Modelling of road profiles using roughness indicators

Authors: Pär Johannesson; Igor Rychlik

Addresses: SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, Box 24036, SE-400 22 Göteborg, Sweden ' Mathematical Sciences, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden

Abstract: The vertical road input is the most important load for durability assessments of vehicles. We focus on stochastic modelling of the road profile with the aim to find a simple but still useful model. The proposed nonstationary Laplace model with ISO spectrum has only two parameters, and can be efficiently estimated from a sequence of roughness indicators, such as IRI or ISO roughness coefficient. Thus, a road profile can be stochastically reconstructed from roughness indicators. Further, explicit approximations for the fatigue damage due to Laplace roads are developed. The usefulness of the proposed Laplace-ISO model is validated for eight measured road profiles.

Keywords: road surface profiles; road irregularity; Laplace process; non-Gaussian process; PSD; power spectral density; ISO spectrum; road roughness coefficient; IRI; international roughness index; vehicle durability; fatigue damage; stochastic modelling; road profiles; roughness indicators; durability assessment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.2014.066068

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 2014 Vol.66 No.4, pp.317 - 346

Accepted: 18 Dec 2013
Published online: 02 Dec 2014 *

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