Use of Probe Vehicles to Measure Road Ride Quality

In this paper, the authors compare roadway roughness measured using a probe vehicle to roadway roughness calculated from the measured profile using an inertial profiler. Roughness is characterized by vehicle body vertical acceleration and probe vehicle roughness index (PVRI), which approximates the International Roughness Index (IRI) of a full car (rather than a quarter car). The reason the PVRI is used rather than the IRI is that acceleration measurements obtained from a probe represent the response of the full car rather than a quarter car. An important aspect of this paper is that the same physical quantities are compared rather than obtaining a correlation between two different physical variables. The results suggest that roughness calculated from probe vehicle measurements is comparable to roughness calculated from the measured profile; however, the investigation also revealed that data sampling frequency and quarter car parameters, specifically suspension damping and tire stiffness, can have a significant effect on the measured PVRI.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFD20 Pavement Monitoring and Evaluation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Katicha, Samer W
  • Flintsch, Gerardo W
  • Fuentes, Luis G
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Photos; References;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Damping (Physics); Pavement performance; Probe vehicles; Ride quality; Roughness; Tire pressure
• Identifier Terms: International Roughness Index
• Subject Areas: Highways; Pavements; I22: Design of Pavements, Railways and Guideways;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01515012
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-2836
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 21 2014 3:16PM