Abstract
The paper deals primarily with MIRA's contribution in the areas of vehicle ride and handling. Vehicle ride and handling are defined in broad terms to delineate the areas under consideration, ride being concerned with passenger reaction, and handling with the driver-vehicle relationship. The most difficult problem of all ride and handling studies is considered to be the human subject since human variability, adaptability, sensitivity and absence of a fixed scale of values render study in the simpler engineering senses difficult.
Instrumentation systems used in the measurement of vehicle ride and handling studies are considered in a general way. A typical ride instrumentation system is illustrated.
Assessment of vehicle ride is considered under two headings, subjective and objective. The methods for subjective assessment of stimuli are discussed and as an illustration of the techniques involved the design of a subjective ride experiment is given. Brief details of the objective measurement technique and the ways of analysing the subsequent data are presented, and typical spectra obtained from the data analysis are shown. The correlation between the subjective and objective results is discussed.
Objective assessment of vehicle handling is considered in some detail. The ways of determining steady state behaviour based on the under/over-steer concept are detailed. The use of a tethered testing technique to overcome difficulties of steady state testing while braking and under limiting adhesion conditions is outlined. Assessment of handling under transient conditions is investigated by means of step input and frequency response tests. Typical results are used to illustrate vehicle behaviour.
Further ride work and subjective assessment of handling are briefly discussed, as are probable future techniques that may be used in the assessment of vehicle ride and handling.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.