ECONOMIC EVALUATION AND THE DESIGN OF VEHICLE SUSPENSIONS

Technical evaluation of products or alternative designs is a frequent and central activity in engineering design. Conventional quantitative evaluation procedures typically involve some element of subjectivity on the part of the engineer. For example, they are likely to require assignment of weighting factors which define the importance of various design criteria. In this paper, an economic approach is proposed for product evaluation. The evaluation process is based on the whole-life cost/benefit of the design, as assessed from the perspective of the owner or operator of the product. It has the advantage of being more objective than conventional approaches, and providing a balanced set of 'weightings' to the various design criteria. The new method is used in this paper to compare four heavy vehicle suspensions. It is also compared with a conventional evaluation method, using weighting factors derived from a survey of vehicle operators. The aim is to investigate the difference in emphasis placed on various evaluation criteria, and the sensitivity of the two approaches to various assumptions in the analyses. The influence of some important factors of vehicle operation, such as service life, operating conditions and suspension parameters, are also investigated. (A)

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/14775360
• Corporate Authors:

  Inderscience Enterprises Limited

  World Trade Center Building, 110 Avenue Louis Casai
  Geneva,   Switzerland 
• Authors:
  • Fu, T-T
  • Cebon, D
• Publication Date: 2003

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: p. 125-61
• Serial:
  • International Journal of Vehicle Design
  • Volume: 31
  • Issue Number: 2
  • Publisher: Inderscience Enterprises Limited
  • ISSN: 1477-5360
  • Serial URL: http://www.inderscience.com/jhome.php?jcode=IJVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Design; Economics; Evaluation and assessment; Fatigue (Mechanics); Safety; Suspension systems; Vehicles; Weight
• ITRD Terms: 226: Cost benefit analysis; 9011: Design (overall design); 255: Economics; 9020: Evaluation (assessment); 5579: Fatigue (mater); 1665: Safety; 1329: Suspension (veh); 1255: Vehicle; 5485: Weight
• Subject Areas: Design; Economics; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00963906
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
• Files: ITRD
• Created Date: Oct 3 2003 12:00AM