Development of analysis tools and stochastic models of road profiles regarding their influence on heavy vehicle fatigue

Abstract

Road profiles are analyzed with focus on road characteristics essential for heavy vehicle fatigue assessment. Road profile measurements indicate that roads contain short sections with above-average irregularity. Such rough sections are shown to cause most of the vehicle fatigue damage. An algorithm using a spatial-frequency description is developed to automatically identify rough sections. On the basis of the analysis, a new stochastic road model, with randomly placed and randomly shaped irregularities, is proposed.