Abstract

Self-exciting sources of vibration wheel unbalance and wheel non-uniformities are known to contribute to ride vibration environment of road vehicles and also to potential road damage in addition to excitations arising from terrain undulations. The present study investigates vehicle vibrations induced by non-uniformities and unbalance of the tire-wheel assembly in conjunction with terrain irregularities. A four degrees-of-freedom pitch plane model of a truck is developed to analyze ride and tire load variations under measured random road excitations. The nonlinear vehicle model comprising the adaptive foot-print tire model is analyzed under excitations arising from a range of mass unbalance and wheel non-uniformity, and phase differences in the defects of the front and rear wheels. A comprehensive parametric sensitivity analysis is carried out to study the vehicle response subjected to all the excitations. The response characteristics are evaluated in terms of measures relevant to ride quality and road damage potential, namely the overall unweighted and frequency-weighted vertical and pitch rms accelerations of the sprung mass and dynamic load coefficient (DLC), respectively.